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An asteroid will just miss us in 2029. Scientists are making the most of a rare opportunity:
To be clear: The asteroid is not going to hit us.
There was a while there when it seemed like it could. Suffice to say those were heady days in the asteroid-tracking community. But as of March 2021, NASA has confirmed that there is absolutely zero chance the space rock known as 99942 Apophis will strike this planet for at least 100 years. So, phew. Cross that particular doomsday scenario off the list.
What remains true, however, is that on Friday, April 13, 2029, an asteroid wider than three football fields will pass closer to Earth than anything its size has come in recorded history.
An asteroid strike is a disaster; an asteroid flyby, an opportunity. And Apophis offers one of the best chances science has ever had to learn how the Earth came to be — and how we might one day prevent its destruction.
[...] "We've never seen something that large get that close," said Lance Benner, a principal scientist at JPL.
"Close," in the space world, is a relative term. At its nearest, Apophis will pass roughly 19,000 miles (31,000 kilometers) above Earth's surface. That's about one-10th the distance to the moon.
[...] From the ground, Apophis will resemble a star traversing the night sky, as bright as the constellation Cassiopeia and slower than a satellite. Though it may appear far away for those of us down here, it will in fact be near enough for NASA to reach out and touch it. OSIRIS-REx, a spacecraft currently ferrying home samples from the surface of an asteroid called Bennu, will rendezvous with Apophis in 2029. Shortly after April 13, the craft — by then renamed OSIRIS-APophis EXplorer, or OSIRIS-APEX — will steer toward the asteroid until it is drawn into its orbit, eventually getting close enough to collect a sample from its surface.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Friday February 17, @04:29PM (1 child)
> Speaking of rockets, it'll be interesting if they ever have to try to deflect an asteroid to save earth.
Yes, the extinction (or aversion of) the human race would probably count as interesting.
The DART mission was quite positive on the ability to actually do something about it (Assuming the collision is detected with a long enough time window)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Asteroid_Redirection_Test [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday February 17, @06:17PM
> Yes, the extinction (or aversion of) the human race would probably count as interesting.
That's not what I wrote nor meant. The motivation for such a mission is pretty obvious. The interesting part would (will?) be how humans, globally, would interact, hopefully harmoniously, to achieve the goal.
We've seen quite a few rocket failures around the world in recent years. Would nations with rockets come up with an international plan to launch several rockets, in case one fails? Would the seriousness of an asteroid deflection mission ramp up the need for better quality control? Would governments and rocket companies open up to people, such as members here, to get involved and help think through the engineering scenarios? Or would it be business as usual "nothing to see here, move along"? I, for one, would like some direct input into such a mission. If I had been involved at Boeing or FAA, MCAS would _never_ have flown (nor Challenger).