I'm an award-winning journalist writing about the night sky and eclipses.
Friday the 13th may be considered an unlucky day, but at 5:45 EDT on Friday, April 13, 2029, it will prove the exact opposite when an asteroid of “dinosaur killer” size passes safely past Earth.
It will pass just 19,635 miles from Earth’s surface, the closest approach of an asteroid of this size that humankind has ever experienced. It will pass between Earth’s geostationary satellites and the Atlantic Ocean, just a tenth of the distance between Earth and the moon. Even though there was only a 2.7% chance of a direct hit by Apophis, the devastation caused by it striking Earth led astronomers to try to understand its orbit in more detail. In 2021, radar observations by NASA’s Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, California and the Green Bank Observatory, West Virginia, in March 2021 refined its orbit. It wasHowever, an asteroid’s orbit can only be calculated so far into the future.
The close pass in 2029 of Apophis is a rare opportunity to visit, so NASA already has a spacecraft in hot pursuit. This close pass is seen as the perfect opportunity to learn more about planetary defense and how an asteroid reacts to passing so close to a body with such enormous gravity. It’s thought that Apophis will be squeezed so much that asteroid quakes and landslides could result.Watching closely will be NASA’s OSIRIS-Apophis Explorer spacecraft.
Asteroids 99942 Apophis Near-Earth Asteroids Neos Planetary Defense RAMSES OSIRIS-APEX OSIRIS-Rex Comets
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James Webb Space Telescope spots asteroid collision in neighboring star systemRobert Lea is a science journalist in the U.K. whose articles have been published in Physics World, New Scientist, Astronomy Magazine, All About Space, Newsweek and ZME Science. He also writes about science communication for Elsevier and the European Journal of Physics. Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy from the U.K.
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