It is the most famous asteroid in astronomy. It is large and solid. And in less than five years, Apophis – “God of Chaos” – will come especially close to Earth.
You will not hit.
But it didn’t always seem that way.
When it was first discovered in 2004, initial orbital calculations were made for Asteroid 99942 Apophis This collision is expected to put Earth in a “danger zone” during its passes in 2029 and 2036.
Apophis is a mass of rock about 350 metres across, about the size of a modern luxury cruise ship or one of America’s massive nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.
If it hits land, it could destroy an area the size of a country. If it hits the sea, it could cause devastating tsunamis.
But since then, additional observations and radar ranging have greatly improved its orbital predictions.
We now know that on April 13, 2029, the asteroid will pass 32,000 kilometers from Earth.
The math is good enough to rule out any risk for another 100 years.
But the geostationary satellites that feed the GPS on your cell phone are 35,800 kilometers away, and the Moon is 384,400 kilometers away.
So, cosmically speaking, Apophis could still be very close.
That’s why the European Space Agency wants to get a good look at it as it launches.
Dangerous asteroid named after the god of chaos
Apophis is named after the ancient Egyptian god of darkness and chaos – a god who was in constant war with Ra (the sun god).
The European Space Agency wants to send Ramses – named after the Egyptian pharaoh’s priest-king – to mediate for humanity(It also stands for Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety.)
As part of the Planetary Defense Program, the mission aims to better understand the composition and behavior of more than 1,000 “planet-killer” asteroids known to pass through Earth’s orbit.
The short notice (four years is the minimum for a space project) was not entirely coincidental.
ESA presents this challenge as a “good practice” for a possible realistic scenario.
Astronomers believe that about 95 percent of planet-killing asteroids have been located. But what worries them is the missing 5 percent.
This effect could come out of nowhere, at any time. The odds of such an effect occurring are like rolling a dice.
About 1.4 million asteroids have been found orbiting the solar system. Most of them are sandwiched between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
But some fell on more extreme paths, sending them diving toward the Sun — through the orbits of the inner planets, including Earth.
A review of the orbits of all known threatening asteroids has recently been completed.
“It’s good news,” says astronomer Oscar Fuentes-Munoz of the University of Colorado Boulder. “As far as we know, there won’t be any impact for the next thousand years.”
But this only applies to the massive asteroids that could kill planets. Others, like Apophis, could still vaporize an area spanning several hundred kilometers.
According to the Planetary SocietyThis is equivalent to 1,000 megatons, or hundreds of nuclear warheads launched in the same place.
What danger do asteroids pose to Earth?
The Earth passes through about 10 tons of planetary dust every day. These are the meteors you see almost every night.
Objects ranging in size from pebbles to bowling balls enter the atmosphere three or four times each day. These objects cause the brightest flashes in the night sky.
Truck-sized objects strike two or three times every century. The last one happened in 2013 — a massive fireball that shattered windows and injured pedestrians over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk.
Large asteroids – those about 150 metres in diameter – can be devastating. But the chances of one entering the atmosphere are about one in 25,000 years.
Any collision with an object larger than a kilometer in size could wipe out civilization as we know it through tsunamis, fireballs and massive clouds of debris hurled high into the atmosphere. The odds of such an object hitting Earth are about once every two million years or so.
The dinosaur killer that struck Earth 66 million years ago is believed to have been about 10 kilometers wide.
Asteroid Expert: ‘Nature Brings Us One’
To accelerate the RAMSES mission, ESA is proposing to reuse the basic design of an asteroid mission already in the pipeline.
the Hera probe The spacecraft is scheduled to launch next October, and its mission is to revisit the double asteroids Didymos and Dimorphos, which will be the subject of an impact experiment in 2022.
Ramses will take advantage of Apophis’s close proximity to Earth to take a closer look at how solid its rocky surface is. This means it could be possible to observe the consequences of the asteroid’s proximity to Earth’s gravity.
“For the first time ever, nature has brought us one and done the experiment itself,” said ESA astronomer Patrick Michel.
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx probe recently returned samples from the asteroid Bennu to Earth. It’s now making its way through space to meet Apophis about a month after it flies by Earth in 2029. It’s expected to stay close to it for more than a year.
One of its missions will be to blow up the surface of Apophis using one of its thrusters.
“This will allow us to observe subsurface materials, which will provide us with otherwise inaccessible insights into space weathering and the surface strength of stony asteroids,” say mission planners at the University of Arizona.
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