NASA/JPL: Planning Now for Asteroid Flyby a Decade Away

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NASA/JPL: Planning Now for Asteroid Flyby a Decade Away

Post by bystander » Tue Apr 30, 2019 8:40 pm

Scientists Planning Now for Asteroid Flyby a Decade Away
NASA | JPL-Caltech | Solar System Exploration | 2019 Apr 29
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Apophis Asteroid and Earth at Closest Approach ~ Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
On April 13, 2029, a speck of light will streak across the sky getting brighter and faster. At one point it will travel more than the width of the full Moon within a minute and it will get as bright as the stars in the Little Dipper. But it won’t be a satellite or an airplane—it will be a 340-meter-wide near-Earth asteroid called 99942 Apophis that will cruise harmlessly by Earth, about 19,000 miles (31,000 km) above the surface. That’s within the distance that some of our spacecraft that orbit Earth. ...

It’s rare for an asteroid of this size to pass by the Earth so close. Although scientists have spotted small asteroids, on the order of 5-10 meters, flying by Earth at a similar distance, asteroids the size of Apophis are far fewer in number and so do not pass this close to Earth as often.

The asteroid, looking like a moving star-like point of light, will first become visible to the naked eye in the night sky over the southern hemisphere, flying above Earth from the east coast to the west coast of Australia. It will be mid-morning on the East Coast of the United States when Apophis is above Australia. It will then cross the Indian Ocean, and by the afternoon in the eastern U.S. it will have crossed the equator, still moving west, above Africa. At closest approach, just before 6 p.m. EDT, Apophis will be over the Atlantic Ocean – and it will move so fast that it will cross the Atlantic in just an hour. By 7 p.m. EDT, the asteroid will have crossed over the United States. ...
The Day the Asteroid Might Hit
ESA | Space Safety | 2019 May 29
Last edited by bystander on Wed May 01, 2019 4:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Added ESA article
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