The European Space Agency (ESA) is accelerating a new mission called Ramses, which will fly to an asteroid near Earth 99942 Apophis and join the space rock in 2029 when it comes very close to our planet - even closer than the region where geostationary satellites are located.
Ramses is short for Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety and, as the name suggests, is the next phase in humanity's efforts to learn more about asteroids near earth (NEO's) and how we could deflect if one were ever discovered on a collision course with the planet Soil.
In order to launch in time for the February 2029 rendezvous with Apophis, scientists from the European Space Agency have been given permission to begin planning for Ramses even before the multinational space agency officially accepts the mission. Approval and funding allocation for the Ramses mission will hopefully take place during the November 2025 meeting of the ESA Ministerial Council (with representatives from each of ESA's member states). To arrive at Apophis in February 2029, the launch would need to take place in April 2028, the agency said.
This is a big deal, because big asteroids don't come this close to Earth very often. So it's scientifically significant that Apophis will pass within 19,794 miles (31,860 kilometers) of Earth on April 13, 2029. For comparison, geostationary orbit is 22,236 miles (35,786 km) above Earth's surface. Such close flybys of asteroids hundreds of meters wide (Apophis is about 1,230 feet, or 375 meters, wide) occur on average only once every 5,000 to 10,000 years. Miss this one, and we'll be waiting a long time for the next one.
Related: 2 asteroids just whizzed past Earth, and NASA captured footage of the actionWhen Apophis was discovered in 2004, it was briefly the most dangerous asteroid known, classified as having the potential to impact Earth in 2029, 2036, or 2068. If an asteroid of this size were to hit Earth, it could blast a crater several kilometers wide and devastate a country with shock waves, sudden heating, and earthquakes. If it crashed into the ocean, it could cause a massive tsunami that would destroy the coastlines of several countries.
As our knowledge of Apophis's orbit improved, the risk of an impact decreased significantly. Radar observations of the asteroid in March 2021 reduced the uncertainty in Apophis' orbit from hundreds of kilometers to just a few kilometers, finally removing any remaining concerns about an impact - at least for the next 100 years. (After 100 years, asteroid orbits can become too unpredictable to plot accurately, but there is currently no indication that an impact will occur after 100 years.) So Earth is expected to be completely safe in 2029 when Apophis passes through. Still, scientists want to see how Apophis will react by coming so close to Earth and entering our planet's gravitational field.
"There is still so much we have to learn about asteroids, but until now we have had to dig deep into the solar system to study them and perform experiments ourselves to interact with their surface," Patrick Michel, director of research at CNRS at the Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur in Nice, France, said in a statement. "Nature brings one to us and performs the experiment itself. All we have to do is watch as Apophis is stretched and squeezed by powerful tidal forces that can trigger landslides and other disruptions and reveal new material from beneath the surface."
By reaching Apophis before the asteroid's close encounter with Earth, and remaining with it during the flyby and beyond, Ramses will be in an excellent position to conduct before-and-after studies to see how Apophis interacts with Earth. By looking for disturbances that Earth's gravitational tidal forces cause on the asteroid's surface, Ramses will be able to learn more about Apophis's internal structure, density, porosity, and composition, all characteristics that we must first understand before we can consider how best to deflect a similar asteroid if one were ever to find itself on a collision course with our world.
In addition to helping protect Earth, knowing about Apophis will also give scientists a better understanding of how similar asteroids formed in the early solar system and, in the process, how planets (including Earth) formed from the same material.
One way we already know that Earth will impact Apophis is by changing its orbit. Currently, Apophis is categorized as an Aten-type asteroid, which is the class of near-Earth objects that orbit the sun closer than Earth. Apophis currently comes in at 0.92 astronomical units (137.6 million km, or 85.5 million miles) from the Sun. However, our planet will give Apophis a gravitational push that will increase its orbit to 1.1 astronomical units (164.6 million km, or 102 million miles), making its orbital period longer than Earth's.
Then it is classified as an Apollo-like asteroid.
Ramses won't be the only one tracking Apophis. NASA has their OSIRIS-REx missionwhich brought back a sample from another asteroid close to Earth, 101955 Bennuin 2023. The spacecraft, renamed OSIRIS-APEX (Apophis Explorer), will not arrive at the asteroid until April 23, 2029, ten days after its encounter with Earth. OSIRIS-APEX will first perform a flyby of Apophis at a distance of about 2,500 miles (4,000 km) from the object, and then return in June of that year to establish orbit around Apophis for an 18-month mission.
Related Stories:
- The 'God of Destruction' asteroid Apophis will arrive at Earth in 2029 - and could encounter a small spacecraft
- How NASA's OSIRIS-APEX asteroid probe survived its first encounter with the Sun
- Car-sized asteroid nearly passes Earth (video, photo)
In addition, the European Space Agency still plans to launch its Hera spacecraft in October 2024 to monitor the progress of the DART mission to the double asteroid Didymos and Dimorphos. DART hit the latest in a test of kinetic impactor capabilities for potentially changing the orbit of a hazardous asteroid around our planet. Hera will investigate the binary asteroid system and observe the crater created by DART's sacrifice to gain a better understanding of Dimorphos' post-impact structure and composition, allowing us to put the results into context.
The more near-Earth asteroids like Dimorphos and Apophis we study, the greater that context becomes. Perhaps the insights gained from these missions will one day save our planet.
