Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A menacing asteroid named Apophis is projected to have a close encounter with Earth in 2029, but scientists have long ruled it out as an impact risk. Asteroids safely fly by Earth all the time ...
99942 Apophis (provisional designation 2004 MN 4) is a near-Earth asteroid and a potentially hazardous object, 450 metres (1,480 ft) by 170 metres (560 ft) in size, [3] that caused a brief period of concern in December 2004 when initial observations indicated a probability of 2.7% that it would hit Earth on Friday, April 13, 2029.
The chance of an unknown asteroid hitting Apophis off its current course at all was less than one-in-a-million. And the odds that such an impact would send it hurtling toward Earth in 2029 was ...
This animation shows the distance between the Apophis asteroid and Earth at the time of the asteroid's closest approach. The blue dots are the many man-made satellites that orbit our planet, and the pink represents the International Space Station.
During the first decade of the 2000s, there were serious concerns the 325 metres (1,066 ft) wide asteroid 99942 Apophis posed a risk of impacting Earth in 2036. Preliminary, incomplete data by astronomers using ground-based sky surveys resulted in the calculation of a Level 4 risk on the Torino Scale impact hazard chart .
Apophis is of interest because it’s an S-type, or stony, asteroid — different from other space rocks visited by NASA missions, including Bennu, which is a C-type, or carbonaceous, asteroid.
"However, a possibility remained that during the 2029 close encounter with Earth, Apophis would pass through a gravitational keyhole, a precise region in space no more than about a half-mile wide,[6] that would set up a future impact on April 13, 2036. This possibility kept the asteroid at Level 1 on the Torino impact hazard scale until August ...
Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists Lance Benner, Paul Chodas and Mark Haynes are studying the 1,100-foot wide asteroid Apophis, which will come within viewing distance of Earth on April 13, 2029.