Photo: NASA
On April 13, 2029, the stars and other objects in the sky will literally align to send shivers down the spines of triskaidekaphobians. That Friday – yes, it’s Friday – an asteroid that takes its name after the Egyptian God of Chaos will come within 31,000 km (19,000 miles) from our home. And humans plan to anger it by planning a landing party.
Called Apophis, the 340-meter (1,100 feet) wide piece of space rock is supposedly going to “cruise harmlessly by Earth” at its closest point ever to humanity’s cradle.
During the 2019 Planetary Defense Conference that takes place this week in Maryland, a bunch of scientists have come together to discuss, among other things, the best ways to interact with the asteroid, possibly even by designing a spacecraft that could reach and study it.
The reason behind this is that Apophis is representative for the 2,000 or so Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHA) tracked by NASA and others. Understanding this asteroid better might give humanity a chance at saving itself from what is generally considered as an unstoppable event: asteroid impact.
"The Apophis close approach in 2029 will be an incredible opportunity for science," said in a statement Marina Brozovi, a radar scientist at NASA's JPL.
"We'll observe the asteroid with both optical and radar telescopes. With radar observations, we might be able to see surface details that are only a few meters in size."
As for the probability of the asteroid impacting Earth in 2029, NASA says it is non-existent, despite earlier calculations that pointed to a 2.7 percent chance of that happening.
Coming so close to our planet will however alter the asteroid’s current orbit, so for now it’s impossible to say where it will be decades later, when it will make yet another pass. Current math shows there’s less than 1 in 100,000 chance of Apophis hitting Earth before the turn of the century.
During the 2019 Planetary Defense Conference that takes place this week in Maryland, a bunch of scientists have come together to discuss, among other things, the best ways to interact with the asteroid, possibly even by designing a spacecraft that could reach and study it.
The reason behind this is that Apophis is representative for the 2,000 or so Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHA) tracked by NASA and others. Understanding this asteroid better might give humanity a chance at saving itself from what is generally considered as an unstoppable event: asteroid impact.
"The Apophis close approach in 2029 will be an incredible opportunity for science," said in a statement Marina Brozovi, a radar scientist at NASA's JPL.
"We'll observe the asteroid with both optical and radar telescopes. With radar observations, we might be able to see surface details that are only a few meters in size."
As for the probability of the asteroid impacting Earth in 2029, NASA says it is non-existent, despite earlier calculations that pointed to a 2.7 percent chance of that happening.
Coming so close to our planet will however alter the asteroid’s current orbit, so for now it’s impossible to say where it will be decades later, when it will make yet another pass. Current math shows there’s less than 1 in 100,000 chance of Apophis hitting Earth before the turn of the century.
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