Asteroid Apophis due to pass close in 2029
These are views of the three asteroids that have been imaged at close range by spacecraft. The image of Mathilde (left) was taken by the NEAR spacecraft on June 27, 1997. Images of the asteroids Gaspra (middle) and Ida (right) were taken by the Galileo spacecraft in 1991 and 1993, respectively. All three objects are presented at the same scale.
This is the story of an asteroid called Apophis.
On Friday the 13th of April, in the year 2029, scientists calculate that asteroid Apophis will come extremely close to Earth. Apophis is about 300 meters wide. That’s about a thousand feet wide. It’s expected to be visible to the eye alone in the night skies of Europe, Africa, and western Asia, a first for an asteroid in recorded history.
Don Yeomans: In fact it will get beneath the geosynchronous satellites, the same satellites that are probably used to beam your radio signals to your listeners. So that’s kind of exciting. But it won’t hit the Earth.
That’s Don Yeomans, manager of NASA’s Near Earth Object Program. He told us there is a tiny chance that Apophis could be on a collision course with Earth seven years later, in 2036. He emphasized, though, that the probability is very very low.
Astronomers will be making optical and radar observations of Apophis again in 2013. Yeomans said he’s confident those observations will rule out any possibility of this asteroid colliding with Earth.
But in the unlikely event that this asteroid is headed for Earth in 2036, he added that we should be able to head off disaster by sending spacecraft out to deflect the asteroid away.
Don Yeomans: If the object passes through a 600-meter-sized keyhole in 2029, that is, a location in space that is only 600 meters wide, it will indeed hit the Earth in 2036. But the chances of its actually passing through this 600-meter-sized keyhole in space in 2029 are extremely low.
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