How are scientists preparing for Apophis’ alarming approach to Earth?

In about five years, a potentially dangerous asteroid will swing by Earth at an alarmingly close distance of less than 20,000 miles (32,000 km). During this rare encounter, Apophis will be ten times closer to Earth than the moon, and scientists want to make the most of his visit.

Apophis is on its way to Earth on April 13, 2029. When it was first discovered in 2004, the 335-meter-wide near-Earth object was classified as a dangerous asteroid that could impact our planet. However, later observations reassured scientists that there was no need to panic yet and that the asteroid had fallen. There is no chance of a collision with Earth for at least another century.

This is very good news considering the size of this object and the serious damage it could cause if it were to ever hit our planet. Hopefully that never happens, but objects of this size collide with Earth about once every 80,000 years, causing catastrophic damage and affecting winters on a global scale.

During the upcoming flight, scientists plan to explore the asteroid to determine whether Earth’s gravitational field will have an effect on Apophis’ orientation, composition and rotation. For example, it can cause asteroid earthquakes, causing a shift in the way their materials are distributed within them, or changing the appearance of their surfaces. Scientists hope to map these potential changes by comparing observations of the asteroid before and after its 2029 collision with Earth. Physical changes to an asteroid can change its orbital path, so scientists will obviously want to document that.

Private space companies such as Blue Origin and startup Exploration Labs, or ExLabs, have come up with proposals for missions to rendezvous with Apophis before the expected flyby, SpaceNews named. At a recent workshop at the European Space Agency’s hub in the Netherlands, the companies presented their mission concepts in an effort to learn more about the asteroid and other space rocks that could pose a potential danger to Earth.

Blue Origin’s proposal included the use of… Orbital platform of the Blue Ring To deliver the cargo to Apophis. Blue Ring, expected to debut in late 2024, is designed to provide comprehensive services to commercial and government customers, and can accommodate payloads weighing up to 6,600 pounds (3,000 kg).

The orbital platform could be used to deliver instruments or deployable spacecraft to Apophis for low-cost, low-risk missions, SpaceNews quoted Steve Squires, chief scientist at Blue Origin.

For its proposal, ExLabs presented an idea previously studied by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Distributed Radar Observations of Interior, or DROID, will send a spacecraft to Apophis, which will deploy two cubesats to perform a “CAT scan” of the asteroid’s interior, according to SpaceNews. The mission will launch in May 2028 and arrive at Apophis in February 2029.

Earlier in February NASA organized a workshop To seek ideas from the private sector “on innovative approaches to missions during the near-Earth flyby of asteroid Apophis in 2029.”

NASA’s OSIRIS-APEX spacecraft, formerly known as OSIRIS-REx, already exists On the way to study Apophis Note the changes the asteroid may undergo as it approaches Earth. After getting off Samples from the asteroid Bennu In the Utah desert, the spacecraft was diverted for a new mission that would require a close pass to the sun, plus three assists from Earth’s gravity, to reach Apophis within five years.

The space agency also has a spare pair of spacecraft that can be reused to study the asteroid Apophis. The Janus mission would launch in August 2022 and travel into space with the Psyche spacecraft to explore the mineral-rich asteroid. An unfortunate software glitch delayed Psyche’s launch two months before it was due to launch Which influences the driving tasks.

Psyche was later launched in October 2023But the new launch window was unable to deliver the twin Janus probes to the mission’s original targets. As a result, the spacecraft was removed from the launch manifest and stored at Lockheed Martin.

The two spacecraft were originally intended to visit the asteroids 1996 FG3 and 1991 VH, but they could be repurposed to study Apophis instead. While there are some differences between Apophis and the original targets of the Janus mission, the twin probes can still fly by and provide similar observations for Earth’s next visitor.

And this is just the beginning. It is possible that other missions will be announced in the coming months and years, given the scientific importance and rarity of such a close encounter.

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