It is the most Infamous asteroidsIt’s big and solid. And in less than five years, Apophis – “God of Chaos” – particularly close to Earth.
It won’t hit.
But it wasn’t always this way.
When it was first discovered in 2004, initial orbital calculations showed Asteroid 99942 Apophis It will put Earth in the collision “danger zone” during its passage in 2029 and 2036.
Apophis is a rock mass about 350 meters in diameter, roughly the size of a modern luxury cruise ship or one of America’s giant nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.
If it struck land it could destroy an area the size of a country, and if it struck the ocean it would cause a devastating tsunami.
However, subsequent observations and radar ranging have significantly improved orbit predictions.
On April 13, 2029, the asteroid is expected to pass 32,000 km from Earth.
And it’s mathematically enough to eliminate risk for the next 100 years.
But the geostationary satellites that power your phone’s GPS are 35,800 km away, and the Moon is 384,400 km away.
So, cosmically speaking, Apophis still occupies a very delicate position.
That’s why the European Space Agency (ESA) is eager to get a good look at the satellite when it’s launched.
A terrifying asteroid named after the God of Chaos
Apophis was named after the Ancient Egyptian god of darkness and chaos, a god who was constantly at war with Ra (the sun god).
ESA is planning to launch the Ramses, named after the Egyptian priest-king Pharaoh. Intercede for Humanity(It also stands for Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety).
The mission, part of the Planetary Defense Program, aims to better understand the composition and behavior of more than 1,000 “planet killer” asteroids known to pass through Earth’s orbit.
And the short notice period — four years is the minimum for a space project — is not entirely coincidental.
ESA presents the challenge as a “good practice” for potential real-world scenarios.
Astronomers believe that about 95% of the so-called “planet killer” asteroids have already been discovered — it’s the remaining 5% that they’re worried about.
It could come out of nowhere at any time, and the odds of such an impact are about as high as a dice game.
About 1.4 million asteroids have been discovered floating around the solar system, with most of them clustered between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
But some asteroids go on more extreme orbits, plummeting toward the Sun beyond the orbits of the inner planets, including Earth.
A survey of the orbits of known threatening asteroids was recently completed.
“The good news is,” says Oscar Fuentes Muñoz, an astronomer at the University of Colorado Boulder, “that as far as we know, there will be no impacts for the next 1,000 years.”
But this only applies to large “planet-busting” asteroids: other asteroids, like Apophis, still have the potential to vaporize areas hundreds of kilometers in diameter.
by The Planetary SocietyThat’s the equivalent of 1,000 megatons, or hundreds of nuclear warheads all detonated in the same place.
What danger do asteroids pose to Earth?
Earth passes through about 10 tonnes of interplanetary dust every day, resulting in meteors that can be seen almost every night.
Objects ranging in size from pebbles to bowling balls enter the atmosphere three to four times a day, producing the brightest flashes in the night sky.
These truck-sized storms occur two to three times a century, most recently in 2013 when a huge fireball struck the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, shattering windows and injuring pedestrians.
A larger one, about 150 metres in diameter, could be devastating, but the chances of one entering the atmosphere are around once every 25,000 years.
An impact from an object larger than one kilometre could bring about the end of civilisation as we know it, with tsunamis, fireballs and a massive cloud of debris rocketing into the atmosphere. Such an event occurs roughly once every two million years.
The meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago is thought to have been about 10 kilometers in diameter.
‘Nature gave us one’: Asteroid expert
To speed up the RAMSES mission, ESA is proposing to reuse the basic design of an already planned asteroid exploration mission.
of Hera Probe It is scheduled to launch in October. Its mission is to revisit the binary asteroids Didymos and Dimorphos, which will be the targets of the impact experiment in 2022.
Ramses will use Apophis’s close approach to get a closer look at how its rocky surface is holding up, meaning it will be able to see the results of the asteroid’s close contact with Earth’s gravity.
“For the first time in history, nature has come to us and is conducting an experiment on itself,” said Patrick Michel, an astronomer at the European Space Agency (ESA).
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft (Osiris is the Egyptian god of the dead) recently sent samples from the asteroid Bennu back to Earth. The probe is currently arcing through space to meet up with Apophis about a month after it passes Earth in 2029. The probe is expected to remain near Earth for more than a year.
One of its missions is to use one of its thrusters to blast up the surface of Apophis.
“This will enable us to see materials below the surface, providing otherwise unparalleled insight into space weathering and the surface strength of stony asteroids,” said mission planners from the University of Arizona.
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