The European Space Agency is accelerating a new mission called Ramses, which will fly to a near-Earth star 99942 Apophys and contact the Space Rock in 2029 when it gets very close to our planet — even closer to the region where geosynchronous satellites sit.
Ramses stands for Rapid Apophis Space Safety Mission and as the name suggests is the next stage in humanity’s quest to learn more about it Asteroids near Earth (NEOs) and how we. It may deviate They should ever find man on a collision course with the planet land. . . .
To launch in time to rendezvous with Apophis in February 2029, European Space Agency scientists have been given permission to begin planning for Ramses even before the multinational space agency officially takes over the mission. Sanctioning and funding for the Ramses mission will hopefully take place at a meeting of the ESA Ministerial Council (including representatives from each of the ESA member states) in November 2025. To reach Apophis in February 2029, start-ups must take place in April the agency says 2028.
This is a big deal because it’s huge The little stars Do not approach the ground this often. It is thus scientifically valuable that, on April 13, 2029, Apophis will pass within 19,794 miles (31,860 kilometers) of Earth. For comparison, the geosynchronous orbit is 22,236 miles (35,786 km) above the surface. Such close flybys by asteroids hundreds of meters across (Apophysis is about 1,230 feet, or 375 meters long) only occur on average once every 5,000 to 10,000 years. Miss this one, we have plenty of time to wait for the future.
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When Apophis was discovered in 2004, it was briefly the most dangerous asteroid known, classified as having the potential to impact Earth possibly in the years 2029, 2036, or 2068. If an asteroid of its size hit the Earth, it could punch them miles out of a crater and devastate a country with shock waves, flash heating, and tremors. If it crashed in the ocean, it could send a high-profile tsunami to devastate the coastlines of several countries.
But over time, as we further refined our knowledge of the apophyseal cycle, the risk of impact dropped dramatically. Radar monitoring In March 2021 it reduced the uncertainty in Apophis’ orbit from hundreds of kilometers to just a few kilometers, finally removing any lingering concerns about impact — At least for the next 100 years. . . . . . . . Still, scientists want to see how Apophis responds as it approaches Earth and enters our planet’s gravitational field.
“There’s still a lot we’ve yet to learn about asteroids but, until now, we’ve had to travel deep into. The solar system to study them and conduct experiments ourselves to interact with their surface,” Patrick Michel, who is director of research at CNRS at the Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in Nice, France, said in a statement. “Nature will bring us one itself we just need to watch as Apophis is stretched and squeezed by strong tidal forces that may cause landslides and other disturbances and expose new material beneath the surface”.
By arriving at Apophis before the asteroid’s close encounter with Earth, and sticking with it throughout the flyby and beyond, Ramses will be in a prime position to conduct before-and-after surveys to see how Apophis will react to Earth. By exploring the perturbations created by Earth’s tidal gravitational forces on the asteroid’s surface, Ramesses can learn about Apophis’ composition, density, porosity, and internal structure, all of which are properties we need to understand first before considering how to optimize Deviation A similar star were one that has ever been discovered to be on a collision course with our world.
In addition to helping protect Earth, learning about Apophis will give scientists more insight into how similar asteroids formed in the early solar system, and, in the process, how planets (including Earth) formed from the same material.
One of the ways we already know the Earth affects Apophis is by changing the Earth’s orbit. Apophis is currently classified as an Aten-type star, which is what we call the class of near-Earth objects that have a shorter orbit around the Sun than the Earth. Apophis currently reaches 0.92 astronomical units (137.6 million km, or 85.5 million miles) from the Sun. However, our planet gives Apophis a gravitational push that enlarges its orbit to 1.1 astronomical units (164.6 million km, or 102 million miles), so that Earth’s orbital period is longer than Earth’s.
It is then classified as an Apollo-type star.
Ramesses will not be alone in tracking down Apophis. NASA again targets them. The OSIRIS-REx missionwhich returned a sample of another near-Earth star, 101955 Determination, in 2023. The spaceship, however, has changed its name OSIRIS-APEX (Apophis Explorer), will not reach the asteroid until April 23, 2029, ten days after a close encounter with Earth. OSIRIS-APEX will first conduct a flyby of Apophis at a distance of about 2,500 miles (4,000 km) from the object, then return in June of that year to settle into Apophis’ orbit for an 18-month mission.
In addition, the European Space Agency still plans to launch. Hera spaceship In October 2024 to follow up on. The Dart Mission to Two asteroids Didymus and Dimorphos. . . . DART influenced the latter in testing the capabilities of a kinetic effect to change the orbit of a dangerous star around our planet. Hera is surveying the binary asteroid system and observing the crater created by the DART sacrifice to gain a better understanding of the composition and structure of the dimorphosis after impact, so that we can put the results into context.
The more we study near-Earth asteroids like Dimorphos and Apophis, the greater that context becomes. Perhaps, one day, the insight gained from these missions will truly save our planet.
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