Apophis is one of the 10 most risky asteroids, according to the ESA.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
Apophis, the Egyptian god of chaos and darkness, is near again. It’s basically just a giant asteroid named after the ancient demonic serpent god, and it’s approaching our planet up close.
Officially known as 99942 Apophis (2004 MN4), the space rock is wider than three football fields, and at one point, scientists estimated it had about a 3 percent chance of hitting Earth during an upcoming short pass in 2029.
A 3 percent chance of collision may sound like a good chance, but when it comes to asteroids and other objects near Earth, especially one the size of Apophis, that’s a terrifyingly high probability. For a given context, Apophis could be about 10 times the size of the meteor that exploded in the atmosphere over Russia in 2013, sending out shock waves that shattered thousands of windows on the ground and injured hundreds.
At the moment, according to the European Space Agency, only one known asteroid has a more than one in a hundred chance of hitting us. That is the small eight meter wide asteroid 2010 RF12. It is currently estimated that by the year 2095 there will be about a 7 percent chance of affecting the Earth. Of course, by then we might have more observations that reduce the likelihood of a collision, and its small size would burn up most of it in the atmosphere anyway (it would be significantly smaller than the 2013 Russian meteor).
All this to say that Apophis is really scary by comparison. Fortunately, scientists have observed the intimidating asteroid for the past decade and luckily managed to rule out any possibility of an impact in 2029 or during another brief as late as 2036.
However, its 2029 visit will still be breathtakingly close, when it passes at a height comparable to some of our artificial satellites.
The great rock will also get close on March 5, 2021. Although it will remain more than 40 times farther away than the Moon this time, it will be the closest Apophis between now and 2029, and astronomers are taking advantage of the opportunity to identify the potential bringer. of chaos to study a bit more closely.
Professionals are already targeting telescopes at Apophis, but citizen scientists are also encouraged to get their sights on the big rock.
“With the demise of the Arecibo telescope, it has become more difficult to accurately measure the position of asteroids during a flyby, ” explains Franck Marchis, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute and Chief Scientific Officer at Unistellar, which sells an autonomous smart telescope, eVscope. Marchis is encouraging eVscope owners to observe help Apophis later this month.
Scientists will use this year’s flyby as a sort of test drive for the big day in 2029, which will be a historic opportunity to observe a real cosmic big guy up close.
And it also provides more data to hopefully create a potential impact in 2068The odds of that happening are currently no better than one in 300,000, but it would always be better to bring that number down to zero.
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