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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, 13 April 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 ...
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 ...
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 .
Within a few years, they were able to dismiss the even smaller chance of a hit in 2036. Images of the asteroid Apophis, captured in 2012, allowed scientists to determine that it will not strike ...
It gained some public interest when it became clear, in January 2005, that the asteroid 99942 Apophis would miss the Earth in 2029 but may go through one or another keyhole leading to impacts in 2036 or 2037. Further research has since been done, however, which revealed the probability of Apophis passing through the keyhole was extremely low. [1]
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 ...