An illustration shows OSRIS-APEX as Apophis skim Earth in 2029 (Image credit Robert Lea NASA)
NASA sent its former OSIRIS-REx spacecraft to study asteroid Apophis and take advantage of the asteroid’s 2029 flyby of Earth, the likes of which hasn’t happened since the dawn of recorded history. The asteroid is also known as “God of Chaos” and is expected to pass by the Earth in 2029.
Apophis is the Egyptian name for this god. In Egyptian mythology, Apophis is the monstrous serpent who personifies chaos and evil. He embodies the darkness that threatens to engulf the sun god Ra each night, representing the eternal struggle between order and disorder. Apophis is often depicted as a giant serpent with glowing red eyes, symbolizing the destructive power of unchecked chaos.
But don’t worry, the asteroid looks nothing like a giant serpent.
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The Apophis asteroid has a 370 meter diameter – more than 1,100 feet wide.
Remember all of those movies about an asteroid coming to destroy the world. There were so many over the years that you must have seen one of them. The story always has something to do with the entire world coming together at a moment of crisis and American atronauts from NASA saving the day.
Well, that is not what we are talking about here.
“OSIRIS-APEX will study Apophis immediately after such a pass, allowing us to see how its surface changes by interacting with Earth’s gravity,” said Amy Simon, the mission’s project scientist based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Apophis’ close encounter with Earth will change the asteroid’s orbit and the length of its 30.6-hour day. The encounter also may cause quakes and landslides on the asteroid’s surface that could churn up material and uncover what lies beneath.
But this will not affect us down here on planet Eart, or at least NASA hopes not.
When OSIRIS-REx left Bennu in May 2021 with a sample aboard, its instruments were in great condition, and it still had a quarter of its fuel left. So instead of shutting down the spacecraft after it delivered the sample, the team proposed to dispatch it on a bonus mission to asteroid Apophis, with an expected arrival in April 2029. NASA agreed, and OSIRIS-APEX (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security – Apophis Explorer) was born.
After considering several destinations (including Venus and various comets), NASA chose to send the spacecraft to Apophis, an “S-type” asteroid made of silicate materials and nickel-iron – a fair bit different than the carbon-rich, “C-type” Bennu.
“The close approach is a great natural experiment,” said Dani Mendoza DellaGiustina, principal investigator for OSIRIS-APEX at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “We know that tidal forces and the accumulation of rubble pile material are foundational processes that could play a role in planet formation. They could inform how we got from debris in the early solar system to full-blown planets.”
OSIRIS-REx is the first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an asteroid. It returned to Earth on Sept. 24, 2023, to drop off material from asteroid Bennu. The spacecraft didn’t land, but continued on to a new mission, OSIRIS-APEX, to explore asteroid Apophis. Meanwhile, scientists hope the Bennu sample OSIRIS-REx dropped into the Utah desert will offer clues to whether asteroids colliding with Earth billions of years ago brought water and other key ingredients for life here.
