German researchers and the German Space Agency will try three strategies for the study of the asteroid that will approach in 2029 to a distance of 31 thousand km from the Earth
In 2029, the asteroid Apophis will pass close to Earth, providing a rare research opportunity for projects like Germany's NEAlight, which aims to develop defense strategies against asteroid threats.
A disaster novelist could not have come up with a better scenario than this: on Friday, the thirteenth of all days, the potentially dangerous asteroid (99942) Apophis will come very close to humanity (Earth). On April 13, 2029, the distance between the cosmic rock and the Earth will be only about 30,000 kilometers (for comparison, the distance between the Moon and the Earth is about 380,000 kilometers). Apophis will then be visible to the naked eye as a point of light in the evening sky.
The asteroid Apophis (99942 Apophis) is a near-Earth body from the Aten asteroid family, with a diameter of about 370 meters and a mass of about 27 million tons. It was first discovered in 2004. Apophis has become a subject of great interest due to the small possibility that it could collide with Earth in the future.
On April 13, 2029, the asteroid will pass within about 31,000 kilometers of Earth, a distance considered very small in astronomical terms. This pass is not expected to cause damage, but will pass closer than some geosynchronous satellites.
What makes the asteroid so dangerous: its average diameter is about 340 meters. If it hits the Earth, the devastation caused by the impact on land will be enormous. "The impact crater alone will probably be several kilometers in diameter, and the force of the impact could destroy an area the size of central Europe," estimates Jonathan Manell, an associate researcher in the professorship of space technology at the Julius-Maximilians University of Wurzburg (JMU) in Bavaria, Germany.
But there's no need to panic: for at least the next hundred years, Apophis will pass by Earth, as NASA had calculated. Since the asteroid was discovered in 2004 and classified as dangerous, NASA and other space agencies have been closely monitoring its orbit and now know that it will pass by Earth and not collide in it.
The NEAlight project of tiny satellites
Apophis provides a rare opportunity for research
Asteroids are irregularly shaped objects that move in orbits around the Sun. To date, about 1.3 million asteroids are known in our solar system, and about 2,500 of them are considered potentially dangerous to Earth. Potentially hazardous asteroids (PHA) are near-Earth asteroids whose orbit is less than 20 lunar distances from Earth's orbit and whose diameter is over 140 meters. Science doesn't know much about asteroids: so far there have only been about 20 satellite missions aimed at these celestial bodies.
What is the structure of asteroids? What affects their trajectory? What happens to them when they pass close to other objects and feel their gravity? There are many questions that still need to be answered. Since an asteroid of this size only comes close to Earth every 1000 years, this is a rare opportunity to study the asteroid with relatively little effort. By doing so, humanity can also acquire knowledge that can be used to develop defenses against dangerous asteroids.
The researchers are now asking the German government for funding to test three ideas.
With funding of around 300,000 euros from the Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Climate, today project manager Jonathan Menel and research assistants Tobias Neumann and Clemens Riegler are testing three modes of action for German minisatellite missions. All three are based on the results of the SATEX project from 2023, in which the team from Würzburg analyzed the potential of tiny satellites for interstellar missions.
First possible course of action: For a national mission, Kyle's team is building a tiny satellite that will accompany the asteroid Apophis for two months on its way to its closest point to Earth and stay with it for a few weeks afterward. During this period, the changes in the apophysis will be photographed and analyzed using various measurements. This strategy poses a number of technical challenges, as the tiny satellite would have to travel a great distance and operate largely independently.
A second possible course of action: Germany participates in the planned European RAMSES mission. This includes a larger satellite, equipped with tiny satellites, telescopes and other measuring instruments, that will fly to Apophis and accompany it in its passage over the Earth for a longer period. One of the tiny satellites could be from Würzburg and study the asteroid in collaboration with the other satellites. For the JMU team, the technical effort will be less and the scientific knowledge gained will be greater. Whether the RAMSES mission will eventually materialize or not also depends on the willingness of the European ESA partners to finance the project.
A third possible course of action: A tiny satellite built at JMU flies past the asteroid when it is closest to Earth and takes pictures. It will show that such a mission is possible even with cheap tiny satellites. The effort will be relatively small, but the observation time will be short and the knowledge obtained will probably be relatively small. This mission can start a few days before Apophis arrives - in the first two ways of operations, the satellite will have to be launched a year earlier.
Details of the scenarios until April 2025
In the NEAlight project, Kyle's team will detail the requirements for these three mission scenarios, define the basic mission architectures, and evaluate implementation options. It will also use the three modes of operation to consider implementation options for interplanetary missions with tiny satellites that will fly to the Moon or Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs), for example.
The project was launched at the beginning of May 2024 and will last a year. It is conducted at the Interdisciplinary Research Center for Foreign Studies (IFEX) in the JMU Professorship of Space Technology.
More of the topic in Hayadan:
