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An asteroid the size of the Eiffel Tower will cross Earth on Friday (March 5) and will be outside our planetary neighborhood until 2029.
The space rock, nicknamed Apophis (an ancient Egyptian demon), was first spotted in 2004 and will not pose any danger to Earth during this week’s flyby; it will cross the planet more than 40 times the distance from Earth to the Moon.
But scientists are using this week as a dress rehearsal for the asteroid’s next pass, April 13, 2029, when Apophis will come as close to Earth as some of the higher orbiting satellites.
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“Apophis in 2029 is going to be a really incredible viewing opportunity for us,” Marina Brozović, radar researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, told Live Science’s sister site Space.com. “But before we get to 2029, we are preparing.”
A brief overview
Apophis is 340 meters wide and is made of rock, iron and nickel. It’s probably shaped like a peanut, although astronomers will have a better idea of its shape when it hits Earth this week, according to NASA.
The asteroid performs a full orbit around the sun approximately every 11 months. On March 5, it will be within 16,852,369 km of Earth at 8:15 p.m. EST (12:15 GMT on March 6).
It’s too far away to be seen with the naked eye, but scientists will use planetary radar to image Apophis as it flies using NASA’s Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California and the Green Bank Telescope in Virginia- Western. They hope to determine the shape of the asteroid and learn more about how it turns.
“We know Apophis is in a very complicated spinning state, it’s kind of spinning and tumbling at the same time,” Richard Binzel, a planet scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Space.com.
To get closer
This planetary radar study will provide researchers with a baseline for the much closer flyby in 2029, when Apophis comes as close as 19,800 miles (31,900 kilometers) to Earth.
It’s close enough that Earth’s gravity can change the shape of the asteroid or scatter rocks on its surface. How and if the asteroid changes during its flight will help reveal details about the internal structure of the asteroid, Binzel said.
On its closest approach in 2029, Apophis will be briefly visible to the naked eye over Western Australia, becoming as bright as the stars of the Big Dipper.
It will be closest to Earth at 6 p.m. EDT on April 13, 2029, when it will be over the Atlantic – an ocean it will cross in just an hour. The asteroid will cross the United States at 7 p.m. EDT.
Apophis owes its name to an ancient Egyptian demon who personified chaos and evil, largely because astronomers initially calculated that there was a 3% chance that the asteroid could impact Earth during its overview of 2029.
They have now shown that the asteroid will not collide with Earth in 2029, nor on its next pass in 2036.
There is still a slight chance that the asteroid will hit Earth in 2068, but the 2021 and 2029 flyovers should give astronomers more information to calculate the future of Apophis.
Editor’s Note (March 6, 2020): This article has been updated to correct the distance at which Apophis will approach Earth during its flight.
This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article here.
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