The European Space Agency (ESA) announced on Tuesday initial funding for a mission to send a probe to the asteroid Apophis, which will pass close to Earth in five years.
The 375-metre-diameter asteroid 99942 Apophis will approach Earth at an altitude of about 32,000 kilometres on April 13, 2029. The European Space Agency's spacecraft is scheduled to accompany the rock from a safe distance as it passes close to Earth.
ESA’s RAMSES (Rapid Apophis Space Safety Mission) programme aims to study the size and orbit of an asteroid affected by Earth’s gravity. The probe is scheduled to launch in April 2028, reaching the asteroid two months before Earth. ESA has authorised the development of RAMSES and will make a decision on full mission approval in November 2025.
Patrick Michel, a scientist at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), stressed that we still have a lot to learn about asteroids, but until now we have had to travel to the deep space of the solar system to study them. Now, for the first time, it is possible to examine an asteroid that is coming to us.
According to astronomers, objects the size of Apophis approach Earth only once every five to ten thousand years.
About two billion people across most of Europe and Africa, as well as some parts of Asia, will be able to see the asteroid, which will pass close to Earth in five years, in clear, dark skies.
NASA announced two years ago that it was extending the mission of the Osiris-Rex spacecraft, and the probe, which is returning home with samples collected from the asteroid Bennu in 2020, will drop the asteroid Apophis, which is approaching Earth. The probe, renamed Osiris-Apex for its new mission, will enter orbit around the rock after its flyby and try to get a closer look.
Apophis, which was first spotted in 2004, will approach Earth three times in the next 100 years, in 2029, 2036 and 2068, but according to scientists' calculations, it will not collide with our planet.
