Apophis Asteroid On Track To Potentially Impact Earth 2029

City-Killer Asteroid On Track To Impact Earth
www.giantfreakinrobot.com...

...Apophis, a city-killer asteroid, could hit Earth as it makes its scheduled super-close approach to our planet in 2029. The chances of this happening are pretty close to naught, and we won’t be able to confirm whether or not Apophis is on a collision course for another three years.

...Apophis, named after an ancient Egyptian deity that embodies darkness and disorder, is a near-Earth asteroid that NASA classifies as a potentially hazardous object with a diameter of 370 meters. Approximately the size of the Eifel Tower...

Subsequent observation of this city-killer asteroid revealed that Apophis will sail safely past Earth during its 2029 flyby without causing any damage on the surface. However, it would sail past at a distance that’s less than 20,000 miles, which could damage some of our satellites...

I often wonder how long it would take before Earth does get smitten by a space rock, however, 20k miles is pretty darn close. If it does miss, there is another chance it would strike in later years.

Personally, either we will have technology by then to knock it off course or as we get closer to the date of it flying by propaganda in news will cause panic and fear of some sort of apocolypse type of genre.

What are your thoughts on this ATS?

a reply to: Skywatcher2011

More doom porn.

a reply to: Skywatcher2011

Too bad we can't put a pod of people on it to study and ride it until it swings back around in 2029.

So, just some quick math...and some fun brain candy. Let's assume Apophis (the anarchist) was headed directly toward Earth to wreak some anarchy here (just for fun of course).

With a diameter of 370m (404yd) calculates out to about ~ 88,000 tons. (that's probably a little light, but we'll go with it)

This is approximately the same weight as a modern day cruise liner.

To put this into perspective, the Space Shuttle, fully assembled and fueled weighed about 1,050 tons. The Shuttle itself weighed in at about 89 tons. It was a lightweight compared to the Apollo Saturn V which tipped the scales at 3,100 tons at liftoff.

The point here is, these are some of the heaviest vehicles ever lifted into space, and they pale in comparison to a mass of 88,000 tons almost by a factor of 30x. In order to change the trajectory (vector) of a mass in space, you're going to need a lot of energy in the form of fuel (thus the comparisons to lift-off weights of the Shuttle and Apollo). Lifting that much 'fuel' into space is currently beyond our grasp.

Now, we wouldn't have to change the trajectory much, maybe just a few degrees of angle or so, IF we were able to start this process well away from Earth. The closer to Earth our little anarchist asteroid gets, the more difficult all of this becomes. Rocket engines are about 60% effective in space (roughly), meaning if they have 10,000 lbs of thrust, about 6,000 lbs (3 tons) of this thrust is usable in space. The Apollo Saturn V assembly produced about 3,800 tons of thrust at liftoff.

We'll stay out of the complicated orbital math and vector geometry in space here, we're merely looking at the logistics of launching a fuel source big enough to influence the mass of our troublemaker. Suffice to say...it's a lot. More than mankind has ever launched. Could it be done? Maybe, but it would take some doing...and a whole lot of money.

From there, people's minds 'gravitate' toward the movies. Why not use nukes (or some such). Well, aside from all the nasty side effects like EMP's and radiation, nukes aren't particularly effective in space. There's no atmosphere (among other considerations) and this is where much of the destructive force comes from. BUT, if you could get a nuke "inside" an asteroid where the force had something to push "against", then it would likely be very effective. The trick is making that happen without destroying the device in the process. (Sorry, Harry (aka Bruce Willis in Armageddon))

Could it be broken up into smaller pieces? Maybe. But the sum of those pieces might be more problematic than the whole though, especially for other orbiting vehicles. And, there's a better than good chance you'd wind up with a couple large pieces and a whole bunch of tiny pieces.

Not to worry though, as it looks like our big troublemaker will pass harmlessly by Earth. Interestingly though, it will pass close enough to Earth to be inside the orbits of some of our geostationary satellites which orbit the Earth (stuff like GPS, etc.). That might create some pucker-factor.

Enjoy!

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Umm...

What about all those space lasers?

Couldn't they just slice it to bits?
LOL


Maybe by 2028, we will be begging for it to hit us?

a reply to: chiefsmom

Why wait until then???

I'm hoping it hits Washington DC on, well, TODAY!!

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Or somehow paint it black to heat it up so it changes course with more energy?

a reply to: JJproductions

What color it is won't change its current energy state, nor its trajectory, not unless its mass changes notably.

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
I'm hoping it hits Washington DC on, well, TODAY!!

That was kinda my thought too ..... I thought ... 'well, there are a couple of places I wouldn't mind seeing this smash into' (DC, Moscow, Beijing, Mecca, Brussels (head of the EU), Erdogans head, etc) Of course, no matter where it landed, the people would just point at America and somehow blame us for it.

originally posted by: theatreboy
a reply to: Skywatcher2011

More doom porn.

You coulda been polite about it.

"More doom porn, please! May I have some more"

But you had to be all demanding, didn't ya?

There once was a rock out in space
That flew at the Earth on a pace
To slam right intuit
It really might do it
And kill off the whole human race

So gird up your loins and let's go
Off to Mars with ole Elon, ya know.
He will find us a way
To live past that day
Well at least he will TELL us it's so

But back to that rock that's so near
If it will or it won't isn't clear
Put an end to our species
Turning all into feces
We will know soon enough, have a beer.

8Then the second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned to blood, 9a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.…


Let it rip!

a reply to: Skywatcher2011

It's believed the Dinosaurs were wiped out by a series of natural disasters followed by a big Asteroid , it could be believed Humanity was wiped out by a series of self induced disasters and a big Asteroid , seems a symmetrical end to the story.

I wouldn't rule out Earth being his by Apophis in 29 but I wouldn't sell my house and spend the next 5 years partying either , but it could be a close shave.

a reply to: gortex

Well, the ELE asteroids were a lot bigger than Apophis (several km across vs. 370m). This little trouble maker might take out a city or two and, depending on which ones, that might not be all bad. You know, somewhere like maybe the North Atlantic ocean northwest of Bermuda, and maybe another one northeast of Hawaii in the Pacific. Although, a direct hit on San Francisco wouldn't hurt my feelings too bad either! LOL!

(JUST kidding...sort of).

a reply to: Skywatcher2011

There will be HUGE sales on just about everything!

I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to the boost to the economy. I don't see the downside of this potential event at this point.

Eh, what do I know.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

During my 30+ year career as a NASA Aerospace Engineer, one of the areas of responsibility in my portfolio was Planetary Defense--meaning detection and neutralization of potentially hazardous Near Earth Objects (NEOS). So I think there are a few things I can add to the discussion here.

The field more or less got going in the 1980s by a bunch of non-governmental astronomers who specialize in studying the small bodies of the Solar System (Comets, Asteroids, Meteors, and small planetary moons). After studying the record of NEO impacts on the Earth (for example the Chixulub crater on the Yucatan Peninsula) they became convinced that while most of the significant impacts occurred long ago and far away, there was still a non-zero threat of impact today and into the future. So lesson number 1 was that you can't just assume that there is no longer any problem--you have to go out and look with telescopes and actually measure the risks.

By 1998 Congress had gotten over the giggle factor and provided funding for NASA to go out and figure out how big the problem is. NEOs are not self-luminous. The only way you can see them is by reflected sunlight or by the infrared radiation they give off by being warmer than the background space. Bigger NEOs carry more kinetic energy and also reflect more light, so the most dangerous ones are also the easiest to detect and track. After about a decade or so, NASA had identified about 1,000 NEOs 1 kilometer or larger in diameter and estimated that that was more than 90% of the risk in that size range. None of them were on a collision course with Earth, and many of them were discovered by backyard astronomers using relatively small telescopes.

So the NEO search program was extended down to NEOs of 140 meters in diameter or greater. There are more of those (approx. 15,000) and they need even bigger telescopes to detect and track.

Eventually, it was figured out that most of the risk of being impacted by an NEO is presented by a small number of them that are on orbits that cross the orbit of the Earth frequently and can be easily perturbed by Earth's gravity field onto a collision course. Those NEOs get many chances to impact Earth in any given 100 year period and are the ones that should receive constant attention. Apophis is one of those Earth-crossing NEOs.

Once we figured out how big the problem is it became possible to start engineering solutions for deflecting a collision, if we should forecast one ahead of time. The two most important parameters that determine the solution are 1) how big the NEO is, and 2) how much time we have to respond.

The Earth's atmosphere filters out NEOs below a certain size (about 50 meters in diameter, as I recall). So we only have to worry about deflecting the ones in space that are bigger than that. NEOs smaller than 50 meters can still cause local damage, but they aren't going to wipe out cities or cause huge tidal waves. The meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia in February 2013 is a good example. It was about 18 meters in diameter, and was entirely undetected before it entered the atmosphere, so we had zero warning time. But because it also disintegrated in the atmosphere, we didn't have to do anything about it.

The bottom line is that Apophis is a pretty good example of the kind of NEO risk that we should plan for. If it is ever found to be on a collision course with the Earth, we will know it 10 years or more beforehand, and it is big enough to cause enough damage that we SHOULD do something to avoid the collision.

The scenario presented by FCD where you land a rocket on Apophis and use the thrusters to change the trajectory is not the one that would be used, however, for at least two reasons. First, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible to "land" on an Asteroid. The gravity field of an Asteroid a few hundred meters in diameter is practically negligible and most Asteroids are tumbling, so you can't really plant a rocket on the surface and have it stay there. Second, even if you could land a rocket on the surface, you would have to expend a lot of fuel to null out the velocity of the rocket relative to the Asteroid, and that wouldn't leave much fuel to actually shove the Asteroid out of the way. (It's the Rocket Equation).

Many studies have been done by Universities and government agencies on engineering the preferred approach, which is to simply collide a small spacecraft with the Asteroid. The closing velocities of a spacecraft with an object like Apophis are easily calculated and typically are around 10 km/s. The momentum of the spacecraft would, of course, be transferred directly to the NEO and contribute toward deflecting the trajectory of the NEO. However, a larger effect occurs because at those closing speeds, the spacecraft and an equivalent mass of the NEO are instantly vaporized and ejected backward in a plume. That plume transfers up to 10 times as much momentum toward deflecting the NEO trajectory as the momentum of the spacecraft. It's an amplification effect.

This effect was measured for the first time during NASA's DART mission of 2022. In that mission, a 500 kg spacecraft was impacted on the Didymos binary Asteroid system at about 6.6 km/s and the amount of ejected matter and the amount of trajectory change were measured. This provides the data required to design a kinetic impactor Asteroid deflection mission for an NEO like Apophis, if we ever had to.

People always ask the question about "nuking an Asteroid". In 2005, Congress asked NASA to look at the range of possibilities for performing the Planetary Defense mission, and there was a special, classified annex to the study in which we looked at some of the issues involved with the nuclear option. The first and most important conclusion was that it is very unlikely that the nuclear option would be needed. As previously mentioned, the most likely threatening NEO would be something like Apophis, and a simple kinetic impactor like the DART mission would get the job done cheaply and efficiently. There would likely be more than 10 years of warning, so you could make one attempt at deflection, measure the results, and then make another one or two attempts, if you had to.

The unlikely scenario where you might need to use a nuclear device is where there is only a few months of warning time instead of 10 years. If you only have months of warning time, you have to supply a much bigger push in order to make the NEO miss the Earth, and that's where the energy of a nuclear detonation comes in. The most efficient way to couple the energy of a nuclear detonation to an Asteroid is with an "enhanced radiation" device (also known as a Neutron Bomb) detonated at a standoff distance. The radiation vaporizes the surface layer of the NEO and creates the same kind of ejecta plume as with the kinetic impactor, except on a much bigger scale. You probably can't just pull a nuclear warhead out of a missile silo in Montana and go Asteroid hunting, but it's not that big of a deal to build a device for that special purpose, and the National Nuclear Security Agency has set aside a couple of warheads for that use, if the need ever arises.

a reply to: Boomer1947

Good write up. One clarification. I wasn't advocating any particular method, but thank you for adding some clarity to my statements. Yes, I would tend to agree some kinetic method would probably be better, but as you also concluded just getting that much mass accelerated sufficiently to even have a kinetic effect is beyond our current grasp. Thus, my (perhaps incomplete) statement about needing to (pre-launch) much of this mass (either in the form of fuel and/or just simply mass for kinetic use) into a parking orbit while you assembled a vehicle which could be assembled and then accelerated to sufficient velocities to change the orbital trajectory of Apophis.

In a truly ideal world, you might even try to use another planetary body such as the Moon as a gravitational slingshot to assist the whole system, but then hitting an object like an asteroid 370m across would be quite the "crack shot" maneuver.

edit - I think if you were to use something like DART type technology, we'd probably need more than one kinetic impact, likely several. That might be doable with current technology, but we'd need to start doing it pretty soon because it would result in very minor angular changes over a long period of time.

Maybe it will break up with one piece leveling DC and another piece leveling NYC.



Naw....we aren't that lucky. It will probably just hit in the ocean and cause a tidal wave that will wipe out part of Europe and our upper east coast here in America. Hawaii should be safe.

Now if you think I can't make up some complete BS, you are wrong. But I am poor at deception, I usually put a LOL or emoji to identify toilet paper needed.

a reply to: rickymouse

If this asteroid is nice and round, hitting in the middle of the Atlantic shouldn't cause too much destruction. Bermuda could be evacuated...couldn't it?

I love what I call "brain candy" stuff like this. All this discussion about asteroids and comets got me to thinking today about the Earth's rotation, and how this would affect things like an asteroid striking Earth.

Given the Earth rotates in a counter-clockwise direction (if viewed from the North polar axis), then a perfectly perpendicular strike would appear to be traveling west in the sky as it approached Earth. Now, obviously an asteroid could originate from virtually any direction, and a perfectly centered perpendicular (I should be using 'azimuths' here, but don't want to confuse things) strike along the equator would be the exception rather than the rule, but it made me wonder if there are differences in what happens to an asteroid if it approaches from the east versus the west. North or south probably wouldn't make much difference, but I wondered if the atmospheric entry from an easterly direction would slow faster, and heat quicker, than an atmospheric entry in a westerly direction.

The rotational speed of Earth at the Equator is about 1,025 mph (which isn't particularly fast), and the approach speed of an average asteroid is something on the order of 21 kps (which works out to about 46,000+/- mph...(very roughly)). So, not a great delta v, but still a 2,000 mph difference depending on direction. This would amount to at least some notable differences in atmospheric drag upon entry.

It's probably not even worth thinking about...other than me just musing about completely nerdy stuff (but hey, that's me!).

Never mind me while I go over there in the corner and mumble to myself and write down crazy numbers and formulas on the back of a bar napkin!