1/25/2024 0 Comments Scientists finetune asteroid earthBut future impacts, particularly of the asteroid's flyby in 2068, could not be dismissed as easily. While low, these estimates were still extreme enough to give Apophis the highest values on two systems used by astronomers to calculate how dangerous an asteroid is to our planet, each defined on the CNEOS website: the Torino Scale and the Palermo Technical Impact Hazard Scale (opens in new tab).īy 2006, the probability of Apophis hitting Earth in 2029 was all but negated by additional calculations. These probabilities were refined with radar observations the following year. The excitement of Apophis' discovery turned to concern when researchers calculated just how close the asteroid's orbit would bring the space rock to Earth.įrom the visual observations taken in 2004, researchers at CNEOS calculated that there was around a 2.7% chance that the object would hit Earth in 2029. However, further observations quickly revealed a wealth of details about the asteroid. Due to technical issues and unfavorable weather conditions, the team was able to observe the new object for only two days. At the time, the asteroid was identified as 2004 MN4. Tholen and Fabrizio Bernardi discovered Apophis on June 19, 2004, while working at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, according to NASA. Why did scientists think Apophis was dangerous?Īstronomers Roy A. According to a 2005 article in Astronomy magazine (opens in new tab), Apophis was a serpent that dwelled in darkness and attempted to devour the sun god Ra each night as he passed across the sky. In 2005, the asteroid, still considered a threatening presence near Earth, was officially named "Apophis," after the Greek name for an ancient Egyptian representation of evil. That collision may have cast the fragment we call Apophis on a trajectory that resulted in its current orbit that comes very close to Earth." "It has been stored in the asteroid belt for 4.6 billion years and might be a fragment of a larger asteroid that broke apart in a collision in the asteroid belt. "Apophis is a piece of an early solar system planetesimal - a planetary building block that never coalesced into one of our solar system's planets," Binzel said. Apophis will miss the Earth," he told via email. "But the three most important things about Apophis are: Apophis will miss the Earth. "What makes Apophis the poster child for potentially hazardous asteroids is that it will make the closest known approach to Earth of any large asteroid this decade. "Apophis is in the category of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) - asteroids with orbits that bring them very close to Earth now and for centuries in the future," said Richard Binzel, a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Even when this risk was negated, researchers still could not rule out the possibility that Earth's gravitational effects could influence the asteroid in such a way that one of its next visits could result in an impact, previously reported. The asteroid sat at the top of the European Space Agency's " impact risk list (opens in new tab)" of PHAs and NASA's Sentry Risk Table (opens in new tab) for 17 years, and was only removed in 2021. Initially, scientists were unsure whether the passage of Apophis would result in a collision with Earth.
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