Scientists Keep Eyes On Asteroid Larger Than Eiffel Tower As It Swerve Past Earth (image@esa.int)

Scientists sets their eyes on the asteroid which is said to be larger than the Eiffel Tower. The asteroid is believed to pass the Earth in 2029. Until recently the scientists feared the event could foreshadow a catastrophic collision.

The researchers hope to keep keen eyes on the asteroid, named as 99942 Apophis, as it makes its close encounter in an effort to bolster our defences against other space rocks.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced funding for preparatory work on the Rapid Apophis Mission for Security and Safety (Ramses). A spacecraft will be sent to the asteroid to glean information about its size, shape, mass and the way it spins as it manoeuvres through space.

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The Ramses mission will shed some light on the composition and internal structure of Apophis, as well as its orbit, and explore how the asteroid changes as it passes within 20,000 miles (32,000km) of Earth, about one-tenth of the distance to the moon, on Friday 13 April 2029.

Dr Holger Krag, the head of the ESA’s space safety programme office said that the flyby that the asteroid does with Earth is “absolutely unique”. He said, no asteroid is expected to come as close for a few thousand years. “If the sky is clear, you should be able to see it with your naked eye”.

It is said that the Apophis will pass closer to the Earth than the geostationary satellites used for TV broadcasting, GPS navigation and weather forecasting. At that distance, the asteroid would start to interact with Earth, said Krag.

He said the insights from Ramses would help scientists understand the asteroid, and the risk such space rocks pose. “Our goal in planetary defence is not to do science on asteroids, but it’s to characterise them in a way that one day we can deflect them when they become dangerous”.

While most asteroids were in fairly secure orbits and did not come near our planet, Earth-crossing asteroids such as Apophis were a different matter, said Prof Monica Grady of the Open University.

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“They come near the Earth, and there’s potential that one day one of them will hit the Earth and cause a major disaster. We believe this happened 65m years ago, when the dinosaurs were all wiped out. And if it’s a big asteroid and it hits us, it’ll be a catastrophe which will destroy humanity”, she said.

Apophis, which was discovered in 2004, kept the scientists up with concerns over the possibility of it colliding with Earth as it orbits the Sun. While Nasa ruled out an impact as Apophis approaches Earth in 2029 and 2036, it was only in 2021 that experts said a clash would be off the table for at least next 100 years.

However, space agencies are not leaving the security of the planet to chance, and are investigating ways of tackling Earth-bound asteroids. Such projects include NASA’s Dart mission, in which a spacecraft was smashed into the asteroid Dimorphos to test whether it was possible to deflect a shape rock.

Ramses is not the only mission preparing to scrutinise Apophis. NASA’s Osiris-Rex mission, which has recovered 4.6bn-year-old chunks of space rocks from the asteroid Bennu, will work with Apophis in 2029 under a new mission titled as, Osiris-Apex.