A while back I wrote a hoax post (which I revealed at the end of the post) about how Atlas-31, a comet, was going to arrive in Earth orbit with aliens aboard. Well, it is time for me to follow up on that with a real article about something that is really going to happen. I have fact checked it, but as always feel free to look yourselves.

Dateline: 13 April 2029

This is the date when the biggest cosmic event in all of Earth's recorded history will take place. Namely, the close flyby of Apophis, a 350 metre wide asteroid will pass just 32,000 kilometres from our planet’s surface. That’s even closer than many of the satellites that provide our TV and weather data.

According to Co-Pilot the name Apophis comes from an ancient Egyptian deity (Stargate anybody?). Also known as Apep or Aphoph, it represents chaos, darkness, and fire, standing in opposition to Maat, the principle of order and truth, and to Ra, the sun god who embodies light and life. He is often depicted as a giant serpent attempting to devour the sun during its nightly journey through the sky, symbolising the struggle between order and chaos. Apophis was commonly associated with earthquakes, storms, death, and general destruction, and was considered the greatest force of evil in Egyptian theology. In myth, Apophis is sometimes said to have originated from the primeval waters of chaos or from the saliva of the goddess Neith, emphasising his connection to the primordial forces of disorder. Ancient Egyptians performed rituals, such as the Ritual of Overthrowing Apophis, to symbolically defeat him and protect Ra, linking human action to the maintenance of cosmic order

The good news is that, despite its promise of chaos and destruction, there is no chance of it hitting Earth - sorry about the clickbait title guys :)

That doesn't mean that it didn't cause a momentary wobbly in the science community when it was first discovered in 2004. In fact early calculations suggested it could be on a collision course with our planet. That set off years of intense tracking. NASA are pleased to confirms that there is in the end no risk of Apophis impacting Earth on its current trajectory.

Let's put its flyby, 32.000 kilometres in perspective. The Moon orbits at just over 384,000 kilometres. Geostationary satellites, the ones that handle communications and weather imaging, sit roughly 29,000 kilometres above Earth. Apophis will pass below that ring of satellites, threading through a zone of near-Earth space that no known asteroid of its size has entered during the modern era of astronomy. 

I do wonder if, despite all of this, it might hit a satellite or two on the way through, in a game of cosmic bowling.

Observers in parts of Europe, Africa, and western Asia can expect to see Apophis with the naked eye as a bright point of light moving across the sky. For the briefest of moments, it will be bright enough to spot without a telescope, something that essentially never happens with an asteroid. It will cross the sky fast enough that its movement will be visible in real time, more like watching a satellite pass than a star.

While the Earth won't be too affected by the flyby, Apophis certainly will. Our planet’s gravity will tug hard enough on the asteroid to reshape several aspects of it. Its orbit around the Sun will shift. Its spin rate will change and its surface may physically be rearranged by the forces acting upon it.

Researchers who are attempting to model what might happen have predicted that tidal forces from Earth’s gravity will likely cause small landslides on parts of the asteroid’s surface. The mechanism is similar to how the Moon pulls on Earth’s oceans, but far more dramatic relative to the asteroid’s weak gravity. About half an hour before the closest approach, gravitational stress on certain regions of Apophis will exceed the force holding loose rocks and dust in place. Simulations estimate that roughly 1 percent of the asteroid’s surface will be disturbed, exposing fresher material from beneath the weathered outer layer. Some regions will experience the opposite effect, with gravity pressing loose grains tighter against the surface. These changes to the asteroid’s rotation and orbit will be permanent. Scientists consider this a rare natural experiment, a chance to watch gravitational forces reshape a small body in nearly real time.

We can only hope that with all of the upheaval that any junks of rock that break away will not be too large nor interfere with our day-to-day lives down here.

NASA is sending a dedicated spacecraft to study the aftermath. OSIRIS-APEX, a follow-on to the OSIRIS-REx mission that successfully collected samples from asteroid Bennu. It will rendezvous with Apophis in June 2029, about two months after the flyby. Its job is to document exactly how the close pass changed the asteroid. It will measure changes in Apophis’s spin, orbit, and surface features. It will also perform a close approach of its own, firing its engines near the asteroid’s surface to blast away loose rocks and dust. This maneuver will let scientists study the composition of material just below the surface, material that would normally be hidden under a layer of space-weathered debris. Because Apophis is a “stony” asteroid made of silicate rock mixed with nickel and iron, the data will help scientists understand a common class of near-Earth objects.

And there you have it my friends a cosmic near miss that in earth terms could be like missing a fatal collision by mere centrimetres!

As always stay safe and well my friends.