Apophis inspired the book 413 Ides of April

According to NASA, an asteroid, 99942 Apophis., will come within 20,000 miles of the Earth on April 13, 2029. This might not seem like a big deal, but it's actually extremely close in relation to space.

Although it's not expected to actually hit our planet, the closeness of the asteroid could cause damage on its surface — the gravity of Earth might cause avalanches on Apophis.

Which could cause Apophis’s trajectory to change for its next encounter with earth on April 13, 2036.

This article was posted on April 13, 2022

Countdown to Apophis - April 13, 2029

www.apophis.us
SCIENCE

Exactly 7 Years From Today A Massive Asteroid Will Get Closer To Earth Than Some Of Our Satellites. Should NASA Visit It?

Jamie CarterSenior Contributor

I inspire people to go stargazing, watch the Moon, enjoy the night sky

On April 13, 2029 the 340m asteroid Apophis will pass inside the orbits of geosynchronous ... [+]

Exactly seven years from today—on April 13, 2029—the “Potentially Hazardous Asteroid” (PHA) called Apophis will pass inside the orbits of our geosynchronous satellites.

That’s about 23,000 miles/37,000 kilometers from Earth’s surface.

That’s close.

Apophis is enormous. Discovered in 2005, it’s reckoned to be about 1,100 feet/340 meters in diameter. That’s about as tall as the Empire State Building in Manhattan, New York.

It’s reckoned that an asteroid as big as that coming as close to Earth as Apophis will is a one-in-a-thousand-years event.

We are safe ... for now.

Apophis isn’t going to strike our planet on April 13, 2029, but scientists think that the effect on it of the close pass could be to alter its trajectory—and dangerously so. It’s possible that Earth swing-by could put it on an Earth-resonant impact trajectory that come 2060 or 2068.

NASA doubts that, but given that Apophis just might cause a catastrophe in 40 years should we use the 2029 close shave to find out more about it?

That’s the theory behind the Apophis 2029 Planetary Defense Mission (PDM), a concept published last year and which is currently being considered as part of the Decadal Survey for Planetary Science and Astrobiology, a report compiled by the National Academy of Sciences that will set out the priorities for NASA for the next 10 years. It will be published on April 19, 2022.

The close pass in 2029 of Apophis is a rare opportunity to visit it, say the authors, who propose NASA launch a spacecraft to make vital measurements in the name of planetary defense.

“To be able to observe the changes that may be induced by the close approach to Earth, the Apophis 2029 PDM must rendezvous with Apophis some months in advance of the close approach,” reads the paper. It would remain at Apophis for several months afterwards.

Any spacecraft would need to launch in late 2027 and arrive at Apophis in late 2028, says the paper.

The main mission objectives for Apophis 2029 PDM would be to:

• make impact risk assessments.

• determine its physical properties.

• determine its interior structure.

• map its entire surface before and after the Earth flyby.

After all, if there’s even a small chance that Apophis could be nudged into a new trajectory that sees it collide with Earth in 2068 then we’d better now what it’s made of—and exactly how best to deflect or disrupt it on to a new trajectory.

It’s also an unmissable opportunity for astronomers and planetary scientists to get a close-up view of true relic of the Solar System’s formation.

NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the world’s first full-scale mission to test ... [+]

NASA

Either way, the Apophis 2029 PDM would be an intriguing follow-up mission to the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the first-ever planetary defense mission from NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). It smash a 500kg spacecraft into binary asteroid 65803 Didymos and its moonlet Dimorphos (also called, rather cutely, “Didymoon.”

DART launched in November 2021 and will arrive at Didymos and Dimorphos this September and during October will crash into Dimorphos at about 15,000 miles per hour.

The plan is to change its orbital velocity by 0.4 mm/s, which will in turn slightly alter the trajectory of Didymos—not because it’s dangerous to Earth, but because it could be a skill that NASA has to use one day to nudge a huge PHA ... like, possibly, Apophis.It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

This article was posted on Oct. 3, 2022

The NASA DART mission smashed a spacecraft into an asteroid. Now what?

Part one of the DART mission was a success. ZDNET spoke with a DART mission leader to find out if we'll avoid the fate of the dinosaurs.

Written by Sabrina Ortiz, Associate Editor on Oct. 3, 2022

On Monday, NASA successfully launched a spacecraft into space and crashed it into the never-seen-before asteroid Dimorphos. The DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission captivated the attention of people globally, as it was NASA's first planetary defense mission, done with the purpose of preventing us from suffering the same fate as the dinosaurs -- getting splatted by an asteroid. 

But now that the crash has happened, what's next for the DART mission? Do we know if it was successful? Can we sleep better at night?

The short answer is, yes. 

"You can rest a little bit better," Carolyn Ernst, DART DRACO instrument scientist at Johns Hopkins APL, said to ZDNET. "The first test that we did was a success."

The DART mission has two major components. The first was seeing if NASA had the technology to send a spacecraft into space to hit a target asteroid that has never been seen before, and this part of the mission was a success. As seen on Monday, the spacecraft hit its target.  

However, the second part of the mission is observing the aftermath of the impact to see if the asteroid's path changed. This part of the mission is of vital importance to measuring the success of the mission. 

"You know, if you went up and you tried to move an asteroid to deflect it from hitting the Earth and it didn't move, that's not successful, right?" said Ernst. 

That's where the DART investigation team comes in. The team will spend the next 6 to 12 months, until major funding ceases, studying images and data to determine if the hit made a difference. 

"What we need to do now is to figure out how much we actually deflected it… to really see how much of a push did we give it, and that can be a piece of the puzzle that informs how you would actually design a mission that was going to try to deflect something," said Ernst. 

"So, do you need something faster? You need something bigger? You need two? Is one sufficient, or is one too much? And kind of thinking about that side of things."

This research is vital because, although there is no asteroid imminently threatening Earth, it is very likely that there will be one in the future. 

"Statistically speaking, something will hit the Earth someday, just because if you have enough stuff in space and you sit around for thousands or millions of years, something will hit you," said Ernst. 

Don't worry -- the odds of an asteroid crashing into Earth in our lifetime is unlikely, according to Ernst. But it's always better to be safe than sorry, right? At least, I think that's what the dinosaurs would have said. 

"And of course, you know, the dinosaurs didn't have the luxury of being able to put together a plan, but we have the capability to start, and so that's what this is -- the first step," said Ernst.

To see how much the asteroid has actually moved post-impact, the team will be harnessing the power of its telescopes, including the James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, and Lucy Space Probe. As those images come in, we will see them too, via NASA. On Thursday, NASA released detailed views of the DART impact in a press release. The Webb telescope captured images of the impact site before and after the collision.

Hubble captured images that show the movement of ejecta, the material that was ejected into the air after impact. The collaboration between both telescopes was a NASA milestone.

"For the first time, Webb and Hubble have simultaneously captured imagery from the same target in the cosmos: an asteroid that was impacted by a spacecraft after a seven-million-mile journey," said NASA administrator Bill Nelson. "All of humanity eagerly awaits the discoveries to come from Webb, Hubble, and our ground-based telescopes -- about the DART mission and beyond."

 Because of the telescopic images that have come in thus far, Ernst has a hunch that the second prong of the mission, actually moving the asteroid, was successful as well.  

"Based on the amount of material that we see coming off in all of these telescopic observations, it seems like we did a big push," said Ernst. 

However, in order to find out for sure, the investigation team will be working hard in the following months to piece together the pieces of the puzzle to tell a greater story. 

"In terms of what's next, pulling all of those data together will be fascinating to see the story that they tell," said Ernst.