• The European Space Agency has announced plans to launch the Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety in 2028.
• The mission will see scientists studying the Apophis asteroid as it comes within 32 000km of Earth.
• An asteroid passing by Earth so closely is a rare occurrence and will help us better understand how Earth’s gravity affects asteroids.

Roughly two years ago, NASA tested a plan to redirect an asteroid. That plan involved slamming a 570kg box into the side of an asteroid in hopes it would change course.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) was crowned a success and now, the European Space Agency wants to do a bit more research in deflecting asteroids. The Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety or Ramses, will see the ESA studying the Apophis asteroid as it makes a near flyby of Earth in 2029.

The asteroid is expected to pass by Earth at a distance of 32 000km. While not an existential threat, it will be close enough to see with the naked eye. While scientists don’t expect the asteroid to hit Earth for at least 100 years, it’s proximity to our planet means it could ultimately slam into our surface.

It’s said to be an occurrence that only happens once every 5 000 to 10 000 years.

As such, the ESA is using the event to study how an asteroid is warped and changed by Earth’s gravity, potentially helping us understand how to avoid a collision with other heavenly bodies.

“There is still so much we have yet to learn about asteroids but, until now, we have had to travel deep into the Solar System to study them and perform experiments ourselves to interact with their surface,” Patrick Michel, Director of Research at CNRS at Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in Nice, said in a statement.

“For the first time ever, nature is bringing one to us and conducting the experiment itself. All we need to do is watch as Apophis is stretched and squeezed by strong tidal forces that may trigger landslides and other disturbances and reveal new material from beneath the surface,” Michel added.

In order to study the asteroid, the ESA will need to launch Ramses in April 2028, allowing enough time for it to get close to Apophis when it passes Earth in February 2029. Ramses will carry a buffet of scientific instruments with it allowing scientists to study its shape, surface, orbit, rotation and orientation. This data will aid in understanding how an impact can change an asteroid’s trajectory.

“Ramses will demonstrate that humankind can deploy a reconnaissance mission to rendezvous with an incoming asteroid in just a few years. This type of mission is a cornerstone of humankind’s response to a hazardous asteroid. A reconnaissance mission would be launched first to analyse the incoming asteroid’s orbit and structure. The results would be used to determine how best to redirect the asteroid or to rule out non-impacts before an expensive deflector mission is developed,” says head of the ESA’s Planetary Defence Office (yes that is both real and the coolest title ever), Richard Mossi.

While the timeline to get Ramses starside is tight, the ESA says that it will reuse much of the technology and expertise used to develop Hera. Hera is currently en route to Didymos and Dimorphos to more closely observe the results of the DART test in 2022.

[Image – ESA-Science Office]