The European Space Agency has given the go-ahead for initial work on a mission to visit an asteroid called Apophis. If approved at a key meeting next 12 months, the robotic spacecraft, often known as the Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety (Ramses), will rendezvous with the asteroid in February 2029.
Apophis is 340 meters wide, in regards to the same as the peak of the Empire State Constructing. If it were to hit Earth, it might cause wholesale destruction a whole lot of miles from its impact site. The energy released would equal that from tens or a whole lot of nuclear weapons, depending on the yield of the device.
Luckily, Apophis won’t hit Earth in 2029. As an alternative, it would pass by Earth safely at a distance of 19,794 miles (31,860 kilometers), about one-twelfth the gap from the Earth to the Moon. Nevertheless, this can be a very close pass by such an enormous object, and Apophis will likely be visible with the naked eye.
NASA and the European Space Agency have seized this rare opportunity to send separate robotic spacecraft to rendezvous with Apophis and learn more about it. Their missions could help inform efforts to deflect an asteroid that threatens Earth, should we want to in the longer term.
The Threat From Asteroids
Some 66 million years ago, an asteroid the scale of a small city hit Earth. The impact of this asteroid led to a world extinction event that worn out the dinosaurs.
Earth is in constant danger of being hit by asteroids, leftover debris from the formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago. Positioned within the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, asteroids are available in many sizes and styles. Most are small, only 10 meters across, but the most important are a whole lot of kilometers across, larger than the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.
The asteroid belt accommodates one to 2 million asteroids larger than a kilometer across and thousands and thousands of smaller bodies. These space rocks feel one another’s gravitational pull, in addition to the gravitational tug of Jupiter on one side and the inner planets on the opposite.
For this reason gravitational tug-of-war, every every so often an asteroid is thrown out of its orbit and hurtles towards the inner solar system. There are 35,000 such “near-Earth objects” (NEOs). Of those, 2,300 “potentially hazardous objects” (PHOs) have orbits that intersect Earth’s and are large enough that they pose an actual threat to our survival.
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Through the twentieth century, astronomers arrange several surveys, comparable to Atlas, in an effort to detect and study hazardous asteroids. But detection will not be enough; we have now to seek out a solution to defend Earth against an incoming asteroid.
Blowing up an asteroid, as depicted within the movie Armageddon, isn’t any use. The asteroid can be broken into smaller fragments, which might keep moving in much the identical direction. As an alternative of being hit by one large asteroid, Earth can be hit by a swarm of smaller objects.
The popular solution is to deflect the incoming asteroid away from Earth in order that it passes by harmlessly. To accomplish that, we would wish to use an external force to the asteroid to nudge it away. A preferred idea is to fireplace a projectile on the asteroid. NASA did this in 2022, when a spacecraft called DART collided with an asteroid. Before we do that out of necessity, we have now to grasp how various kinds of asteroids would react to such an impact.
Apophis, Ramses, and Osiris-Apex
Apophis was discovered in 2004. The asteroid passed by Earth on December 21, 2004 at a distance of 14 million kilometers. It returned in 2021 and can swing by Earth again in 2029, 2036, and 2068.
Until recently, there was a small probability that Apophis could collide with Earth in 2068. Nevertheless, during Apophis’ approach in 2021, astronomers used radar observations to refine their knowledge of the asteroid’s orbit. These showed that Apophis wouldn’t hit our planet for the following 100 years.
The Ramses mission will rendezvous with Apophis in February 2029, two months before its closest approach to Earth on Friday, April 13. It would then accompany the asteroid because it approaches Earth. The goal is to learn the way Apophis’s orbit, rotation, and shape will change because it passes so near Earth’s gravitational field.
In 2016, NASA launched the “Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security–Regolith Explorer” (Osiris-Rex) mission to review the near-Earth asteroid Bennu. It intercepted Bennu in 2020 to gather samples of rock and soil from its surface and dispatched the rocks in a capsule, which arrived on Earth in 2023.
The spacecraft continues to be on the market, so NASA renamed it the “Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security–Apophis Explorer” (Osiris-Apex) and assigned it to review Apophis. Osiris-Apex will reach the asteroid just after its 2029 close encounter. It would then fly low over Apophis’s surface and fire its engines, disturbing the rocks and mud that cover the asteroid to disclose the layer underneath.
A detailed flyby of an asteroid as large as Apophis happens just once every 5,000 to 10,000 years. Apophis’s arrival in 2029 presents a rare opportunity to review such an asteroid up close, and seeing the way it is affected by Earth’s gravitational pull. The knowledge gleaned will shape the best way we decide to guard Earth in the longer term from an actual killer asteroid.
Ancient Egyptian Mythology
When Ramses and Osiris-Apex meet up with Apophis in 2029 they may inadvertently reenact a core component of ancient Egyptian cosmology. To the traditional Egyptians, the sun was personified by several powerful gods, chief amongst them Re. The sun’s setting within the evening was interpreted as Re dying and entering the netherworld.
During his nighttime journey through the netherworld, Re was menaced by the nice snake Apophis, who embodied the powers of darkness and dissolution. Only after Apophis had been defeated could Re be revitalized by Osiris, the king of the netherworld. Re could then once more be reborn within the east, rising within the sky over again.
Tomb murals, coffins, and funerary papyri depict Apophis as a big, coiled snake threatening Re as he sails in his solar barque (sailing ship). But Apophis is all the time defeated, his body pierced by a spear or riven by knives.
Though the asteroid Apophis poses no danger within the near future, Ramses (named after the pharaohs of the identical name, which meant “born of Re”) and Osiris-Apex will study it in order that sooner or later we’ll know methods to defeat it—or any of its distant brethren.
