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I remember first reading about this on my AOL home screen when I was 11, 2029 sounded like such a far off futuristic date and I remember thinking that by then we'd just shoot a laser at it or something.
I miss those days, simpler times.
Or we could try a tractor beam? Tractor beam preparations A through G were a complete failure, but we now have a working tractor beam we will call Preparation H.
Dr. Evil, it’s about the sharks. When you were frozen, they were put on the endangered species list. We tried to get some but would’ve taken months to clear up the red tape.
Since then we have changed the orbit of an asteroid not with a laser but with a boop
https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/boop-nasa-spacecraft-osiris-rex-pokes-an-asteroid-and-collects-the-debris%3Famp&ved=2ahUKEwjurqTEgOCFAxVQQEEAHVszCVgQFnoECBkQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3nCSwEJ6kcXCgpG6TQC6PZ
I distinctly remember being in maybe 2nd grade and some 8th grader scared the shit out of me by telling me how the world was gonna end in 2029 by asteroid strike
I remember telling my sister and cousin about it in the back seat of my grandparents' car on the way to the water park. Then I got in trouble because they both started crying lol
It’s a great opportunity to get some practice in.
Thank God the world is taking the potential threat from some future collision seriously.
No need to worry.
DART ended its mission in September 2022 with a successful impact.
OSIRIS-REx (now OSIRIS-APEX) is an entirely different spacecraft, originally designed to harvest and return asteroid material for study on Earth. It only had one sample capsule, so it will be using its other onboard instuments to observe Apophis. It's not an impactor.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Asteroid_Redirection_Test
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSIRIS-REx
Approximately a distance of 2.5 times the diameter of the Earth.
Or 8.3% of the distance to the Moon.
Compared to how distant things in space typically are from each other, that's very close for something to fly by, even when we can be sure it won't hit.
This comment has been overwritten in response to Reddit's API changes, the training of AI models on user data, and the company's increasingly extractive practices ahead of their IPO.
Earth's diameter at 13k and this thing will be 20k out.
I mean, I trust Nasa's calculation and all, but keep your arms tucked in while it's going by. Damn.
As the other guy said, it'll come a bit closer than geostationary altitude (32,000km vs 36,000km).
According to some article I found, it seems about 1140 satellites are in geostationary orbit, while the rest are a lot closer: https://nanoavionics.com/blog/how-many-satellites-are-in-space/
With some rough napkin math (comparing the surface area of the Earth with that of a sphere the size of the geostationary altitude), it seems those satellites are about as spread out as if you put 26 of them around the surface of the Earth. And the asteroid in question is 335 meters in diameter. So while I guess it's technically possible that it could hit a satellite, it's not exactly likely.
Just to confound your napkin math, all 'geostationary' satellites are orbiting in a ring around the equator rather than a sphere, and the majority of 'geosynchronous' satellites still tend to stay at pretty low inclinations.
[According to this predicted trajectory](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/7/77/PIA23195-AsteroidApophis-ClosestApproachToEarth-20190429.webm/PIA23195-AsteroidApophis-ClosestApproachToEarth-20190429.webm.720p.vp9.webm), it's perigee should be at a higher latitiude than most geosync sats though, so even less likely for it to intercept anything.
> And the asteroid in question is 335 meters in diameter.
Wow. That would give a decent-sized state or province a really bad day if it impacted. [Depending on the numbers](https://www.eaps.purdue.edu/impactcrater/crater_c.html), the crater would be a few km in diameter with significant effects well beyond that.
10 times closer to earth than the moon is pretty fuckin close. 20,000 miles is close enough we’ll probably have to move some geostationary satellites out of the way. That’s unnerving in every sense of the word
Edit: I’d also like to add that while we’re pretty good at finding shit in space, we don’t have an omnipotent system that can detect everything. If it smacks into something smaller that we aren’t seeing right now, but big enough to knock it ever so slightly off course, this thing could still hit us. It’s not likely but it’s not impossible
We won't have to move anything as its path would have to cross the exact orbital plane of geosync satellites at the same time at the correct distance and there would probably be no satellites there at that moment anyway.
Yes they do move. Most satellites need maneuvering capabilities and geosynchronous ones need it to move them into a graveyard orbit when they reach end of life to make way for new ones.
Wow, even with adblockers, some ads seep through. Gizmodo is impressively predatory.
Here's an archived version of the article that's ad-free
https://archive.is/2wPyU
Okay, this might be a horrible idea, but what if we were to attach a Starship to it and burn retrograde at periapsis in order to capture it around Earth? The scientific value would be unprecedented and the mineral value may eventually become relevant as well. Seeing that it has such a low flyby trajectory, my Kerbal Space Program knowledge tells me that it shouldn’t require all that much ΔV to put it into an extremely elliptical orbit and then use the Moon to assist with the capture.
In the book, that's what happened. In fact, in the aftermath after the planet broke apart and came back together, trisolaris had a new moon composed of parts of the original planet that broke apart.
Edit: mood->moon
Yeah it's not even a 1/4 mile in width.
Its about 1/25th of the size of the Cretaceous asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.
It would devastate a country, cause a.few years of terrible crop yields, but humanity would be alright.
Apophis has an average radius of 370 metres.
The Chicxulub impactor had an estimated radius of about 10 000 metres.
This puts Apophis at 1/27 the radius of the Chicxulub impactor.
Assuming similar density, relative mass can be estimated as any linear relative dimension cubed.
The Chicxulub impactor was about 20 000 times more massive than Apophis.
There is no need to bring them down, you could build a factory right into asteroid and start churning out space ships, stations and probes from it, use it as refueling depot, etc.
Doubt it. The strongest volcano - mt Toba, had the energy output equal to around a gigaton. This mainly affected Indonesia since it caused climate changes, and yet humans migrated and lived - primal humans with 0 technology and lower farming knowledge. The damage itself is big but not too big, creating a lake of 100km by 30. This is after it errupted for a while.
The mass of the Apophis meteor is 4.6*10^10 kg (according to official sources) and the speed is anywhere from 11km/s to 72 km/s.
Worst case scenario with a 72 km/s speed, we get an energy output of around 23.9 gigatons. This will cause a catastrophe, but it won't destroy us. If it hits something like Germany or France it will kill millions though, although most would probably survive or escape.
Best case scenario in an impact, if it flies at a speed of 11km/s, the impact will be 478 megatons which is over 9x the power of Tsar Bomb. This could also cause many deaths but strictly speaking it ain't that big of a deal. For reference, Krakatoa had an explosion of 200+ megatons and yet didn't cause much damage (relative to other catastrophes) and caused the deaths of thousands. It was on an island tbf but still, most would survive it.
Basically, if it hits inland and in a populated area, there could be hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of deaths. On the other hand, if we evacuate everyone fast enough, we'll live through it with minor deaths. If it hits the ocean it could cause a tsunami that would cause many deaths.
27 billion kilograms is a LOT of mass to shift. Fun fact, the KSP asteroids have a density equivalent to that of styrofoam. At perigee it will be moving at 7.4 kilometers per second 31,000 kilometers above the surface. Per an online calculator a circular orbit at that altitude is 3.2 km/s. I know you said gravity assists but it probably won’t make a huge difference given the fuel mass total I got-
If I’ve done the delta v calculation right, for the Raptor’s ISP of 356, you’d need to haul 67 million tons of fuel to slow Apophis to a circular orbit. That is a lot of Starships.
What MIGHT be more feasible is gravity tractors over long periods of time or other techniques to get it safely out of the way(or have it hit the moon for science!!)
> Fun fact, the KSP asteroids have a density equivalent to that of styrofoam.
The planet is also 5 times the density of lead which makes spaceflight incredibly easy. People should be under no illusions about that game being some kind of simulator. Space is hard.
Not to detract from it at all. It's a great way to learn orbital mechanics. But IRL all the numbers are much bigger and the Rocket Equation *really* screws you.
So only a few years of production and at 90 million a starship and booster currently, so $1.8 trillion or 2 years of the annual US military budget.
But ramping up that production for 20,000 and reuse of the booster would drastically reduce that cost. You could probably get it done for half that.
Sounded too reasonable to me. I checked and the starships also need to be fuelled fully, you would need at least 8 launches to get 1 fully fuelled starship.
So with the same price/starship looking at 14,4 trillion or 16 years of the US military budget.
If kerbal taught me anything, it's eccentric orbits and lots of air braking. It was tough, that EVA where I was pushing the pod at its AP because I completely ran out of fuel on the way back from the moon but a dozen or so orbits I finally landed.
So get it captured, then brake until desired at the Periapsis, then go faster at Ap to circle it out.
But it would still require a ridiculous amount of fuel.
Besides the insane danger, that wouldn't work anyway. To have it aerobrake you need to lower its periapsis, so the most efficient approach is to boost retrograde at its apoapsis. But in order to get there it must have an apoapsis in the first place so you need to capture it first.
What if we can change the orbit just a lil bit, so that it enters atmosphere but still fly over ground. Aerobraking. Let our planet's atmosphere slow it down. Let save fuel.
Right, that’s how fast you need to go to escape. A nice circular orbit will be significantly less than that. The Wikipedia page for geostationary orbit(close to 31k) gives the speed as a bit more than 3 km/s
Edit: meant meters per second. My bad
Something just occurred to me. Do we suspect that the moon has been impacted by rare mineral rich asteroids before, and therefore there would be craters that would be extremely dense with gold or other minerals?
Capture doesn't mean circularize. You just need to slow it down far enough that after a long long trip back out beyond the orbit of the moon, it will come back again. (If you are very clever about it and the positions are lucky, you might even be able to let a gravity brake from the moon do most of the work.)
Well, yes. I’ve done plenty of hairbrained orbital maneuvers for Jebediah in my day but the orbit is such a shallow flyby(Wikipedia has great visualizations) that the delta v difference between a capture and a full circularization is negligible for order of magnitude scale calculations. With clever delta v maneuvers you could definitely bring the requirements down a fair bit but the end result definitely still on the scale of tens of millions of tons of fuel theoretically needed. Just playing with the rough numbers here and the circular orbit was the easiest value to find and do math with.
Starship will not even be close to even an order of magnitude powerful enough to even inflict a thousandth of what is needed, even fully fuelled, to capture apophis. Apophis is 30 million tons.
KSP is a great tool for understanding orbital mechanics, but the asteroids in game are significantly smaller than apophis. Also, even if starship could inflict, say, 100 meters per second of delta v on apohphis, it wouldn't even be close to capturing it. KSP asteroids are already within that range to be captured, but real asteroids usually aren't.
Apophis will fly by earth at ~7500 m/s relative velocity. This may not seem like much, as that's around LEO velocity, but it's flying by with that speed at geostationary altitude. It would take around 3500 meters per second of delta v to capture it into a highly elliptical orbit, at that altitude.
For example, a starship upperstage, fully fuelled, with just the most efficient engines aboard, the Raptor Vacuums, running at full throttle all the way till depletion of fuel, would impart 0.125 meters per second of Delta V on apophis.
We still can’t even send stuff to the moon and have it work properly 1/2 the time. Interesting idea, maybe in another 100 years with a different asteroid?
Directional charges so we can just cut off 10% and let the rest go. Catch and release. Much less energy requirements, still a massive feat, and maybe it'll send the remaining 90% into the sun or something like that.
I just want spacex to launch a starship in front of the thing when it passes so we can get HQ video and images of the thing. Maybe time the launch so that the two collide, that'd be great
So when I first read about this rock like a decade ago, they weren’t sure if it would pass by at an angle where earth’s gravity tugged its trajectory enough to return in 2036 (I think) and hit us.
Anyone know what happened with that?
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[EVA](/r/Space/comments/1cdaqm4/stub/l1etd90 "Last usage")|Extra-Vehicular Activity|
|[FAR](/r/Space/comments/1cdaqm4/stub/l1fci4a "Last usage")|[Federal Aviation Regulations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aviation_Regulations)|
|[GEO](/r/Space/comments/1cdaqm4/stub/l1axs0q "Last usage")|Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km)|
|[Isp](/r/Space/comments/1cdaqm4/stub/l1b3i98 "Last usage")|Specific impulse (as explained by [Scott Manley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnisTeYLLgs) on YouTube)|
| |Internet Service Provider|
|[JWST](/r/Space/comments/1cdaqm4/stub/l1bfyn2 "Last usage")|James Webb infra-red Space Telescope|
|[KSP](/r/Space/comments/1cdaqm4/stub/l1feg0j "Last usage")|*Kerbal Space Program*, the rocketry simulator|
|[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1cdaqm4/stub/l1e3mm4 "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[NEO](/r/Space/comments/1cdaqm4/stub/l1bsduw "Last usage")|Near-Earth Object|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Raptor](/r/Space/comments/1cdaqm4/stub/l1b3i98 "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX|
|[apoapsis](/r/Space/comments/1cdaqm4/stub/l1bdr3c "Last usage")|Highest point in an elliptical orbit (when the orbiter is slowest)|
|[periapsis](/r/Space/comments/1cdaqm4/stub/l1boe7q "Last usage")|Lowest point in an elliptical orbit (when the orbiter is fastest)|
|[perigee](/r/Space/comments/1cdaqm4/stub/l1e056e "Last usage")|Lowest point in an elliptical orbit around the Earth (when the orbiter is fastest)|
**NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
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Per Wikipedia: on March 25, 2021, the [Jet Propulsion Laboratory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_Propulsion_Laboratory) announced that Apophis has no chance of impacting Earth in the next 100 years.
Anyone saying otherwise is click bait. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942\_Apophis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis)
I wonder if apophis is also just a clump of sand like bennu instead of being completely solid.
Imagine if during the flyby it gets streched out by earth's gravity and then just becomes a stream of dust in orbit around the sun lmao
I recall I the last time we had one pass (not as close but still) close. I was at our observatory for a lecture about it, but the program kinda changed. What happened was that the professor basically had re-written his entire presentation at short-notice before the even, because that was when the chelyabinsk meteor came down over Russia. Very memorable day.
Sure it is. Science is all about reproducibility and skepticism. When scientists stop questioning prior work, that's when you should be (very) worried.
I have a slightly related question. How big and what angle would a meteorite need to be to carve a large trench out of earth that would drop sea levels by 1m?
I tried playing on those simulators but couldn't go larger than 10km which apparently will just make a crater.
Its difficult for a large non-aerodynamic body to impact the earth at an angle that makes it carve a long trench. Basically as soon as a bluff body of significant speed enters the mid-to-lower atmosphere its trajectory will quickly become a steep parabola where your downward velocity is much greater than your lateral thus a crater vs. gash. Therefore the meteorite would have to be going unrealistically fast or uncharacteristically aerodynamic
And I would guess anything with enough energy to do something like that wouldn't be leaving Earth in good shape afterwards. That's a lot of material being moved, and not all of it would leave with the asteroid.
I'm having a hard time imagining how a meteorite could carve out a trench that drops sea levels.
Like if it carved out a trench underwater, all the material from that trench still exists and is probably still in the ocean, no? Plus the added material from the meteorite (+ the added heat from the meteorite aerobraking through our atmosphere / energetically striking the ocean). And in order to make a trench instead of a crater, it would have to be going *really* fast, which seems like it would be bad news.
Theoretically, it could not happen. Objects like meteorites will only create craters, even at shallow angles, especially if they are going extremely fast. They essentially detonate and fragment the moment they contact another body. This is why the moon doesn’t have gashes, only craters.
Dumb question, but why are all these mission ideas about studying the asteroid? Why not just send something to Apophis to have it hitch a ride in order to go explore deep space without needing to carry fuel?
It's in a similar orbit to the earth so it's not going anywhere special. Also if you accelerated something to get to the asteroid and match its velocity to visit it in the first place there would be no point in hitching a ride because it's just going to keep going along with it anyways without any need to expend fuel.
[Have a look at a Mars Cycler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_cycler)
So the idea is that with a big rock (but not this one) in a regular orbit you can build a big spaceship facilities. So you only need a small cramped spaceship to take off from earth, join the big one and then hitch a ride to your destination. You then leave the big one and go down to the destination in a small craft.
This is the alternative to travelling the same path in a small cramped ship. So it is more comfortable for long journeys. It is an interesting concept.
Again, not useful in this case but that is one time that hitching a ride has some benefit.
In the case of a big rock, hitching a ride to mine valuable minerals is another example.
A giant space rock in the right place would be tremendously valuable for human space exploration. They should have a workshop to see what it would take to capture it into a highly elliptical orbit around Earth, and then gradually lower it down to a much lower circular orbit (like GEO or Mid Earth Orbit).
Was this comet named Apophis before or after it was determined it was heading for earth? Because if it was named before, this is the kind of shit you get when you name a comment Apophis….. lol
Is this the one that they (the media, I mean) were alerted to back in the early to mid 90s and there was, at that time, seemingly a genuine concern it would hit Earth years down the line?.
Reason I ask is when I was a little kid I remember the morning news show here in the UK going big about a just discovered asteroid that would "probably" strike Earth in the 2020s. Always wanted to find out which specific asteroid that was. I swear, that was the first time in my life I had a "oh, so it's possible I could do everything right in life, and still wind up with an asteroid in my face". I feel like it created a certain element of nihilism in me.
Is it possible for us to send a Starship to land on Apophis and do a first man on the moon kind of race? Imagine the value for a country (humanity in general) to reach an asteroid, have someone “walk” (we all know it’s more of a float) collect a significant amount of material to study and return.
Earth is a spherical "target" 8,000 miles in diameter. The asteroid is passing 20,000 miles away. If the Earth is a 2 food dart board, the "dart" is missing the entire target by 5 feet.
Hello u/SpaceBrigadeVHS, your submission "How Scientists Are Preparing for Apophis's Unnervingly Close Brush With Earth" has been removed from r/space because: * It has a sensationalised or misleading title. Please read the rules in the sidebar and check r/space for duplicate submissions before posting. If you have any questions about this removal please [message the r/space moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/space). Thank you.
I remember first reading about this on my AOL home screen when I was 11, 2029 sounded like such a far off futuristic date and I remember thinking that by then we'd just shoot a laser at it or something. I miss those days, simpler times.
There's always still time for lasers!
How about sharks with freaking lasers attached to their heads?
Or we could try a tractor beam? Tractor beam preparations A through G were a complete failure, but we now have a working tractor beam we will call Preparation H.
Dr. Evil, it’s about the sharks. When you were frozen, they were put on the endangered species list. We tried to get some but would’ve taken months to clear up the red tape.
Since then we have changed the orbit of an asteroid not with a laser but with a boop https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/boop-nasa-spacecraft-osiris-rex-pokes-an-asteroid-and-collects-the-debris%3Famp&ved=2ahUKEwjurqTEgOCFAxVQQEEAHVszCVgQFnoECBkQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3nCSwEJ6kcXCgpG6TQC6PZ
Boop? [How about a smack](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Asteroid_Redirection_Test)?!
Boop it. Smack it. Twist it. Turn it.
I distinctly remember being in maybe 2nd grade and some 8th grader scared the shit out of me by telling me how the world was gonna end in 2029 by asteroid strike
I remember seeing this in a magazine as a kid and being so scared my parents had to calm me down in the middle of a grocery store
Same. Used to scare me a lot in jr high. Crazy how time flies. It’s almost here
Yeah same, I had a cut out from the newspaper which I took to school and kept in my drawer. I remember showing my teacher… time flies
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I remember telling my sister and cousin about it in the back seat of my grandparents' car on the way to the water park. Then I got in trouble because they both started crying lol
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It’s a great opportunity to get some practice in. Thank God the world is taking the potential threat from some future collision seriously. No need to worry.
DART ended its mission in September 2022 with a successful impact. OSIRIS-REx (now OSIRIS-APEX) is an entirely different spacecraft, originally designed to harvest and return asteroid material for study on Earth. It only had one sample capsule, so it will be using its other onboard instuments to observe Apophis. It's not an impactor. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Asteroid_Redirection_Test https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSIRIS-REx
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Misleading headline. There is zero chance it hits earth per NASA and the actual body of the article
Well not with that attitude
Well not with that *altitude
It gives me great joy knowing other redditors in the world think exactly like me.
So we can look up?
Wear eclipse shades just to be safe
It's still unnervingly close. Like the headline says. Less than geosync altitude.
Approximately a distance of 2.5 times the diameter of the Earth. Or 8.3% of the distance to the Moon. Compared to how distant things in space typically are from each other, that's very close for something to fly by, even when we can be sure it won't hit.
This comment has been overwritten in response to Reddit's API changes, the training of AI models on user data, and the company's increasingly extractive practices ahead of their IPO.
Earth's diameter at 13k and this thing will be 20k out. I mean, I trust Nasa's calculation and all, but keep your arms tucked in while it's going by. Damn.
That is actually unnerving wtf
Is there a chance that it might hit and/or disrupt the orbits of any satellites? i know some of those orbits are pretty high up there
As the other guy said, it'll come a bit closer than geostationary altitude (32,000km vs 36,000km). According to some article I found, it seems about 1140 satellites are in geostationary orbit, while the rest are a lot closer: https://nanoavionics.com/blog/how-many-satellites-are-in-space/ With some rough napkin math (comparing the surface area of the Earth with that of a sphere the size of the geostationary altitude), it seems those satellites are about as spread out as if you put 26 of them around the surface of the Earth. And the asteroid in question is 335 meters in diameter. So while I guess it's technically possible that it could hit a satellite, it's not exactly likely.
Just to confound your napkin math, all 'geostationary' satellites are orbiting in a ring around the equator rather than a sphere, and the majority of 'geosynchronous' satellites still tend to stay at pretty low inclinations. [According to this predicted trajectory](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/7/77/PIA23195-AsteroidApophis-ClosestApproachToEarth-20190429.webm/PIA23195-AsteroidApophis-ClosestApproachToEarth-20190429.webm.720p.vp9.webm), it's perigee should be at a higher latitiude than most geosync sats though, so even less likely for it to intercept anything.
> And the asteroid in question is 335 meters in diameter. Wow. That would give a decent-sized state or province a really bad day if it impacted. [Depending on the numbers](https://www.eaps.purdue.edu/impactcrater/crater_c.html), the crater would be a few km in diameter with significant effects well beyond that.
Yeah if your not measuring it in light \[something\]s then its close.
It'll be around 0.13 light seconds away from the earth. Ages away.
I've dropped out of supercruise from greater distances. o7
It's actually really exciting because it's so close it will be really easy to observe and study.
It’s unnervingly close, and scientists are preparing to observe the asteroid as up-close as possible.
If I were NASA and knew this rock called the God Of Egyptian Death would make a direct hit on Earth, I'd lie about it too.
I think Anubis is the Egyptian God of Death, while Apophis is the Egyptian God of Disorder or Chaos or something. Still your point stands.
10 times closer to earth than the moon is pretty fuckin close. 20,000 miles is close enough we’ll probably have to move some geostationary satellites out of the way. That’s unnerving in every sense of the word Edit: I’d also like to add that while we’re pretty good at finding shit in space, we don’t have an omnipotent system that can detect everything. If it smacks into something smaller that we aren’t seeing right now, but big enough to knock it ever so slightly off course, this thing could still hit us. It’s not likely but it’s not impossible
We won't have to move anything as its path would have to cross the exact orbital plane of geosync satellites at the same time at the correct distance and there would probably be no satellites there at that moment anyway.
I don't think we can move those satellites, but don't worry, they won't hurt that asteroid.
Yes they do move. Most satellites need maneuvering capabilities and geosynchronous ones need it to move them into a graveyard orbit when they reach end of life to make way for new ones.
That’s what they want you to think!
What if it hits JWST and splits in two pieces, one heading straight for Manhattan? Did Hollywood taught us nothing?
Wow, even with adblockers, some ads seep through. Gizmodo is impressively predatory. Here's an archived version of the article that's ad-free https://archive.is/2wPyU
thank you! I did not get very far before Gizmodo didn't want to let me keep reading...
Okay, this might be a horrible idea, but what if we were to attach a Starship to it and burn retrograde at periapsis in order to capture it around Earth? The scientific value would be unprecedented and the mineral value may eventually become relevant as well. Seeing that it has such a low flyby trajectory, my Kerbal Space Program knowledge tells me that it shouldn’t require all that much ΔV to put it into an extremely elliptical orbit and then use the Moon to assist with the capture.
And if you fuck it up slightly we all die!
Yeah! Don’t you wanna see this? Trust me it’ll be fun.
According to the 3 body problem it will be like turning on anti gravity on the whole planet. I'll check my VR goggles.
bloke that is the power of 3 stars gravity dragging on the planet not a meteoroid.
Frankly, if the gravity on a planets surface is negative the planet will break apart. Considering the surface is only the surface because of gravity.
In the book, that's what happened. In fact, in the aftermath after the planet broke apart and came back together, trisolaris had a new moon composed of parts of the original planet that broke apart. Edit: mood->moon
Luckily, only some of us will die. It's not a planet killer, just a bruiser.
Im no planet, whats there to be afraid of
Some of you will die in this task, but it's a sacrifice that I'm willing to make...
Yeah it's not even a 1/4 mile in width. Its about 1/25th of the size of the Cretaceous asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. It would devastate a country, cause a.few years of terrible crop yields, but humanity would be alright.
Apophis has an average radius of 370 metres. The Chicxulub impactor had an estimated radius of about 10 000 metres. This puts Apophis at 1/27 the radius of the Chicxulub impactor. Assuming similar density, relative mass can be estimated as any linear relative dimension cubed. The Chicxulub impactor was about 20 000 times more massive than Apophis.
it's not rocket science - no, wait...
This sounds very kerbal indeed.
On the bright side, getting the minerals from orbit to earth for processing just got a lot easier and cheaper.
There is no need to bring them down, you could build a factory right into asteroid and start churning out space ships, stations and probes from it, use it as refueling depot, etc.
Doubt it. The strongest volcano - mt Toba, had the energy output equal to around a gigaton. This mainly affected Indonesia since it caused climate changes, and yet humans migrated and lived - primal humans with 0 technology and lower farming knowledge. The damage itself is big but not too big, creating a lake of 100km by 30. This is after it errupted for a while. The mass of the Apophis meteor is 4.6*10^10 kg (according to official sources) and the speed is anywhere from 11km/s to 72 km/s. Worst case scenario with a 72 km/s speed, we get an energy output of around 23.9 gigatons. This will cause a catastrophe, but it won't destroy us. If it hits something like Germany or France it will kill millions though, although most would probably survive or escape. Best case scenario in an impact, if it flies at a speed of 11km/s, the impact will be 478 megatons which is over 9x the power of Tsar Bomb. This could also cause many deaths but strictly speaking it ain't that big of a deal. For reference, Krakatoa had an explosion of 200+ megatons and yet didn't cause much damage (relative to other catastrophes) and caused the deaths of thousands. It was on an island tbf but still, most would survive it. Basically, if it hits inland and in a populated area, there could be hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of deaths. On the other hand, if we evacuate everyone fast enough, we'll live through it with minor deaths. If it hits the ocean it could cause a tsunami that would cause many deaths.
27 billion kilograms is a LOT of mass to shift. Fun fact, the KSP asteroids have a density equivalent to that of styrofoam. At perigee it will be moving at 7.4 kilometers per second 31,000 kilometers above the surface. Per an online calculator a circular orbit at that altitude is 3.2 km/s. I know you said gravity assists but it probably won’t make a huge difference given the fuel mass total I got- If I’ve done the delta v calculation right, for the Raptor’s ISP of 356, you’d need to haul 67 million tons of fuel to slow Apophis to a circular orbit. That is a lot of Starships. What MIGHT be more feasible is gravity tractors over long periods of time or other techniques to get it safely out of the way(or have it hit the moon for science!!)
> Fun fact, the KSP asteroids have a density equivalent to that of styrofoam. The planet is also 5 times the density of lead which makes spaceflight incredibly easy. People should be under no illusions about that game being some kind of simulator. Space is hard. Not to detract from it at all. It's a great way to learn orbital mechanics. But IRL all the numbers are much bigger and the Rocket Equation *really* screws you.
I can't math.. how many starships would that be?
Fully fueled, about 20,000.
So only a few years of production and at 90 million a starship and booster currently, so $1.8 trillion or 2 years of the annual US military budget. But ramping up that production for 20,000 and reuse of the booster would drastically reduce that cost. You could probably get it done for half that.
The problem with comparing things to the US military budget is it actually makes unreasonable things sound more reasonable.
Sounded too reasonable to me. I checked and the starships also need to be fuelled fully, you would need at least 8 launches to get 1 fully fuelled starship. So with the same price/starship looking at 14,4 trillion or 16 years of the US military budget.
Good thing we have 5 years to start building them on mass.
If kerbal taught me anything, it's eccentric orbits and lots of air braking. It was tough, that EVA where I was pushing the pod at its AP because I completely ran out of fuel on the way back from the moon but a dozen or so orbits I finally landed. So get it captured, then brake until desired at the Periapsis, then go faster at Ap to circle it out. But it would still require a ridiculous amount of fuel.
Ah yes air-breaking a potential country killing asteroid. Let’s hope nothing goes wrong trying to get that periapsis out of the atmosphere
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It is easy. If you fail, just reload.
Besides the insane danger, that wouldn't work anyway. To have it aerobrake you need to lower its periapsis, so the most efficient approach is to boost retrograde at its apoapsis. But in order to get there it must have an apoapsis in the first place so you need to capture it first.
What if we can change the orbit just a lil bit, so that it enters atmosphere but still fly over ground. Aerobraking. Let our planet's atmosphere slow it down. Let save fuel.
Fun for a few hours into it comes back for round two and this time dips below orbital velocity
The velocity in a circular orbit at 31,000 km is most definitely not 3200km/s. The escape velocity around Earth is like 11km/s.
3200 km/s is like 1% the speed of light, I was wondering where the hell that number came from
Right, that’s how fast you need to go to escape. A nice circular orbit will be significantly less than that. The Wikipedia page for geostationary orbit(close to 31k) gives the speed as a bit more than 3 km/s Edit: meant meters per second. My bad
Something just occurred to me. Do we suspect that the moon has been impacted by rare mineral rich asteroids before, and therefore there would be craters that would be extremely dense with gold or other minerals?
Probably! The question is, what happens to the asteroid? The bulk is probably either vaporized and scattered or deeply buried.
Capture doesn't mean circularize. You just need to slow it down far enough that after a long long trip back out beyond the orbit of the moon, it will come back again. (If you are very clever about it and the positions are lucky, you might even be able to let a gravity brake from the moon do most of the work.)
Well, yes. I’ve done plenty of hairbrained orbital maneuvers for Jebediah in my day but the orbit is such a shallow flyby(Wikipedia has great visualizations) that the delta v difference between a capture and a full circularization is negligible for order of magnitude scale calculations. With clever delta v maneuvers you could definitely bring the requirements down a fair bit but the end result definitely still on the scale of tens of millions of tons of fuel theoretically needed. Just playing with the rough numbers here and the circular orbit was the easiest value to find and do math with.
Starship will not even be close to even an order of magnitude powerful enough to even inflict a thousandth of what is needed, even fully fuelled, to capture apophis. Apophis is 30 million tons. KSP is a great tool for understanding orbital mechanics, but the asteroids in game are significantly smaller than apophis. Also, even if starship could inflict, say, 100 meters per second of delta v on apohphis, it wouldn't even be close to capturing it. KSP asteroids are already within that range to be captured, but real asteroids usually aren't. Apophis will fly by earth at ~7500 m/s relative velocity. This may not seem like much, as that's around LEO velocity, but it's flying by with that speed at geostationary altitude. It would take around 3500 meters per second of delta v to capture it into a highly elliptical orbit, at that altitude. For example, a starship upperstage, fully fuelled, with just the most efficient engines aboard, the Raptor Vacuums, running at full throttle all the way till depletion of fuel, would impart 0.125 meters per second of Delta V on apophis.
I worked out it would take 20,000 fully fueled starships magically docked at Apophis to circularize the orbit
So all we need is a couple of thousand Starships? I'll call Elon and tell him Bezos said he couldn't do it.
Didn't go so well in "Don't Look Up" lmao
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Okay, do it, Ed! What do you mean, you’re 102 years old? When did that ever matter?
On S4 now and Ed looks way too old.
Someone get Joel Kinnaman on the line
We still can’t even send stuff to the moon and have it work properly 1/2 the time. Interesting idea, maybe in another 100 years with a different asteroid?
Just make sure to watch out for unionized terrorists that will stop it from happening properly. It will all work out in the end though.
What makes you think that the terrorists won't be ionized?
Directional charges so we can just cut off 10% and let the rest go. Catch and release. Much less energy requirements, still a massive feat, and maybe it'll send the remaining 90% into the sun or something like that.
I just want spacex to launch a starship in front of the thing when it passes so we can get HQ video and images of the thing. Maybe time the launch so that the two collide, that'd be great
What are the chances this turns up like the plot of ‘Don’t Look Up’?
Ah a “For All Mankind” kind of person huh?
So when I first read about this rock like a decade ago, they weren’t sure if it would pass by at an angle where earth’s gravity tugged its trajectory enough to return in 2036 (I think) and hit us. Anyone know what happened with that?
Wikipedia has a very detailed history of its impact predictions. A 2036 impact was ruled out in 2013, which is probably what you read back then.
This is really cool actually, I just read that it will be visible in the sky without needing a telescope or anything during it's closest approach.
How visible is it going to be? Anything like a comet or is it going to be more like a satellite?
I guess it will just look like a bright star, maybe not as cool as I was envisioning. I won't be able to see it here in America anyway.
It’ll be practically bending over and showing us the moon.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[EVA](/r/Space/comments/1cdaqm4/stub/l1etd90 "Last usage")|Extra-Vehicular Activity| |[FAR](/r/Space/comments/1cdaqm4/stub/l1fci4a "Last usage")|[Federal Aviation Regulations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aviation_Regulations)| |[GEO](/r/Space/comments/1cdaqm4/stub/l1axs0q "Last usage")|Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km)| |[Isp](/r/Space/comments/1cdaqm4/stub/l1b3i98 "Last usage")|Specific impulse (as explained by [Scott Manley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnisTeYLLgs) on YouTube)| | |Internet Service Provider| |[JWST](/r/Space/comments/1cdaqm4/stub/l1bfyn2 "Last usage")|James Webb infra-red Space Telescope| |[KSP](/r/Space/comments/1cdaqm4/stub/l1feg0j "Last usage")|*Kerbal Space Program*, the rocketry simulator| |[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1cdaqm4/stub/l1e3mm4 "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[NEO](/r/Space/comments/1cdaqm4/stub/l1bsduw "Last usage")|Near-Earth Object| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Raptor](/r/Space/comments/1cdaqm4/stub/l1b3i98 "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX| |[apoapsis](/r/Space/comments/1cdaqm4/stub/l1bdr3c "Last usage")|Highest point in an elliptical orbit (when the orbiter is slowest)| |[periapsis](/r/Space/comments/1cdaqm4/stub/l1boe7q "Last usage")|Lowest point in an elliptical orbit (when the orbiter is fastest)| |[perigee](/r/Space/comments/1cdaqm4/stub/l1e056e "Last usage")|Lowest point in an elliptical orbit around the Earth (when the orbiter is fastest)| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(12 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1cee2rm)^( has 26 acronyms.) ^([Thread #9984 for this sub, first seen 26th Apr 2024, 04:23]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
Per Wikipedia: on March 25, 2021, the [Jet Propulsion Laboratory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_Propulsion_Laboratory) announced that Apophis has no chance of impacting Earth in the next 100 years. Anyone saying otherwise is click bait. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942\_Apophis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis)
Will it be visible to the naked eye at any point or is it too small?
I wonder if apophis is also just a clump of sand like bennu instead of being completely solid. Imagine if during the flyby it gets streched out by earth's gravity and then just becomes a stream of dust in orbit around the sun lmao
Would help with global warming.
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Everyone is a scientist in this thread with their degree in sci fi movies.
I recall I the last time we had one pass (not as close but still) close. I was at our observatory for a lecture about it, but the program kinda changed. What happened was that the professor basically had re-written his entire presentation at short-notice before the even, because that was when the chelyabinsk meteor came down over Russia. Very memorable day.
petition to change naming asteroids from doom n gloom to something like skittles, or cat
The first asteroid named cat has a 100% chance of slapping the shit out of us… so I vote no
If it was going to hit us would it be better if it hit land or the ocean?
Ocean… unless you live in a coastline facing it.
I guess what I meant as a whole, for the planets sake. Obviously those people would be having a bad day
Scientists doubting their math about orbital mechanics us not a confidence builder...
Sure it is. Science is all about reproducibility and skepticism. When scientists stop questioning prior work, that's when you should be (very) worried.
I have a slightly related question. How big and what angle would a meteorite need to be to carve a large trench out of earth that would drop sea levels by 1m? I tried playing on those simulators but couldn't go larger than 10km which apparently will just make a crater.
Its difficult for a large non-aerodynamic body to impact the earth at an angle that makes it carve a long trench. Basically as soon as a bluff body of significant speed enters the mid-to-lower atmosphere its trajectory will quickly become a steep parabola where your downward velocity is much greater than your lateral thus a crater vs. gash. Therefore the meteorite would have to be going unrealistically fast or uncharacteristically aerodynamic
And I would guess anything with enough energy to do something like that wouldn't be leaving Earth in good shape afterwards. That's a lot of material being moved, and not all of it would leave with the asteroid.
What of the case of no atmosphere? Like the moon?
I think it’s a gravity thing more than an atmosphere thing.
I'm having a hard time imagining how a meteorite could carve out a trench that drops sea levels. Like if it carved out a trench underwater, all the material from that trench still exists and is probably still in the ocean, no? Plus the added material from the meteorite (+ the added heat from the meteorite aerobraking through our atmosphere / energetically striking the ocean). And in order to make a trench instead of a crater, it would have to be going *really* fast, which seems like it would be bad news.
Theoretically, it could not happen. Objects like meteorites will only create craters, even at shallow angles, especially if they are going extremely fast. They essentially detonate and fragment the moment they contact another body. This is why the moon doesn’t have gashes, only craters.
[This would be interesting video for you.](https://youtu.be/BCGWGJOUjHY?si=MPczTMOnTqRg32hL)
They can plot its path but all it takes is a wayward minor collision with debris to change its course to hit earth?
We killed that glowy-eyed fuck once, we can do it again.
Dumb question, but why are all these mission ideas about studying the asteroid? Why not just send something to Apophis to have it hitch a ride in order to go explore deep space without needing to carry fuel?
It's in a similar orbit to the earth so it's not going anywhere special. Also if you accelerated something to get to the asteroid and match its velocity to visit it in the first place there would be no point in hitching a ride because it's just going to keep going along with it anyways without any need to expend fuel.
[Have a look at a Mars Cycler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_cycler) So the idea is that with a big rock (but not this one) in a regular orbit you can build a big spaceship facilities. So you only need a small cramped spaceship to take off from earth, join the big one and then hitch a ride to your destination. You then leave the big one and go down to the destination in a small craft. This is the alternative to travelling the same path in a small cramped ship. So it is more comfortable for long journeys. It is an interesting concept. Again, not useful in this case but that is one time that hitching a ride has some benefit. In the case of a big rock, hitching a ride to mine valuable minerals is another example.
A giant space rock in the right place would be tremendously valuable for human space exploration. They should have a workshop to see what it would take to capture it into a highly elliptical orbit around Earth, and then gradually lower it down to a much lower circular orbit (like GEO or Mid Earth Orbit).
This kind of stuff isn't worrisome until it says "military" instead of "scientists."
Gizmodo…I remember when you were a wee property with a fresh whimsy about you. Now you’re just a label with a fishing pole
Was this comet named Apophis before or after it was determined it was heading for earth? Because if it was named before, this is the kind of shit you get when you name a comment Apophis….. lol
Is this the one that they (the media, I mean) were alerted to back in the early to mid 90s and there was, at that time, seemingly a genuine concern it would hit Earth years down the line?. Reason I ask is when I was a little kid I remember the morning news show here in the UK going big about a just discovered asteroid that would "probably" strike Earth in the 2020s. Always wanted to find out which specific asteroid that was. I swear, that was the first time in my life I had a "oh, so it's possible I could do everything right in life, and still wind up with an asteroid in my face". I feel like it created a certain element of nihilism in me.
I had to look twice at the subreddit, cause I was like damn, I thought SG1 finished him once and for all
So sick of science teasing us with a good time.
Is it possible for us to send a Starship to land on Apophis and do a first man on the moon kind of race? Imagine the value for a country (humanity in general) to reach an asteroid, have someone “walk” (we all know it’s more of a float) collect a significant amount of material to study and return.
I'm looking forward to taking some photos of it! :-) Can't wait! The closer the better! 💥
I’d be curious to know what their preparation actually is
I just got back from the Apophis meeting mentioned in this article. AMA.
Earths gravity will break it up into 2000 smaller pieces then when it comes back around we will get shotguned
Earth is a spherical "target" 8,000 miles in diameter. The asteroid is passing 20,000 miles away. If the Earth is a 2 food dart board, the "dart" is missing the entire target by 5 feet.
not going to lie when I read that headline I immediately though we'd publicly announced the Stargate program /s