Will a Metor Sktrike Earth Again
An asteroid nosotros in one case idea was on a collision course with Earth volition at present be visited by a repurposed spacecraft when the space stone passes shut in 2029.
When asteroid Apophis was discovered in 2004, it appeared to be headed towards World with a risk of touch on in 2029 that would have had potentially catastrophic results. This 340 metre-broad boulder is much smaller than the 1 that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, but it is large enough to obliterate a large city.
So information technology was a great relief when further observations of the orbit of Apophis allowed astronomers to summate that on its see with united states of america in 2029 it volition pass past nearly 30,000 km, or ane 10th the distance to the moon. This means that there's no risk that it will strike or crusade any damage, but it is nonetheless a shut telephone call by astronomical standards. It volition be shut enough that people in Europe and parts of Africa may be able to run across it with the naked centre every bit it flies past.
And since Apophis volition be coming to the Earth, scientists at the University of Arizona have come upward with a clever plan to accept advantage of the opportunity to report this visitor in closeup detail.
Right after that close run into in 2029, a spacecraft that is already in space and has already completed its primary mission will be tasked with catching upward with Apophis and flying alongside it for eighteen months.
This robot probe, OSIRIS-REx was launched in 2016, and in 2022 information technology visited an asteroid named Bennu, where it picked up a sample that it will bring home to World. When information technology gets here in 2023, it volition drop off the sample completing its primary goal.
But NASA has now extended funding through the end of the decade to keep the spacecraft running. The new mission is being dubbed OSIRIS-Apophis Explorer, or OSIRIS-Apex.
The probe will rendezvous with Apophis and go into orbit around the asteroid. It won't retrieve a sample as it did from Bennu, only will come extremely close, almost touching it, and then fire thrusters to kicking up surface cloth and reveal what is underneath. It will likewise measure how much the orbit of the asteroid was altered past the Globe'south gravity to determine how close information technology might come up to us again in the future.
The longer mission is office of an overall NASA initiative to extend viii planetary exploration missions, including the two rovers on Mars, Curiosity and Perseverance, the Mars Insight lander, orbiters around Mars and the moon, and the New Horizons program, which flew past Pluto in 2022 and is now exploring the Kuiper Belt at the edge of our solar system.
Extending space missions is non new, every bit most of these robots are over-built to such an extent they last far across their principal goals. The Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, which landed in 2004, were to bulldoze around on the surface for 90 days, but ended up operating for years. The Voyager mission, launched in 1977, involved twin spacecraft sent out to explore the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn, but Voyager 2 continued on to Uranus and Neptune and both are still operating today in interstellar space.
Prolonging the life of existing spacecraft is cheaper than building new ones and because they run for many extra years, it is an opportunity for the next generation of young scientists to join the squad and have over leadership roles.
In the case of these rendezvous with asteroids, it'due south important to know what they are fabricated of — and not just because they are extremely erstwhile and incorporate data about the early solar organization. If nosotros exercise spot i that does turn out to be headed right for united states of america and need to nudge it to avoid a collision, information technology would be good to know what we are dealing with.
Source: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/asteroid-fly-by-earth-1.6435560
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