In April 2029, a rock the size of the Eiffel Tower is going to skim past Earth so closely that people in Europe, Africa and western Asia will be able to see it with the naked eye. No telescope required. Just look up.
The asteroid in question is 99942 Apophis, named after the ancient Egyptian god of chaos and darkness. It’s a fitting name. When it was first discovered in 2004, astronomers briefly calculated a 2.7% chance it would actually hit us. That’s not a rounding error. That’s the kind of number that gets space agencies out of bed at 3am.
Scientists have since ruled out any impact for at least the next century, but that hasn’t made Apophis any less extraordinary. On 13 April 2029, the asteroid will pass within roughly 32,000 kilometres of Earth’s surface. That’s closer than the satellites powering your GPS. At that distance, it’ll be visible as a slow-moving star-like point of light, drifting across the sky at around 42 kilometres per second.
To put that in perspective, the Moon sits about 384,000 kilometres away. Apophis will be ten times closer than that.
NASA and the European Space Agency are already planning observation missions to study the flyby in detail. ESA’s Ramses mission, approved earlier this year, aims to rendezvous with Apophis before the close approach, giving scientists a ringside seat as Earth’s gravity stretches and warps the asteroid’s surface in real time. Nobody’s ever watched that happen before.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime event,” said planetary scientist Dr Holger Sierks, involved in the Ramses planning. “An asteroid this size passing this close simply doesn’t happen on a human timescale.”
Apophis measures roughly 375 metres across. An impact, were it ever to happen, would release energy equivalent to several hundred nuclear bombs. It won’t hit us in 2029. But the flyby will give researchers their best-ever chance to understand exactly what we’d be dealing with if one like it ever did.
Whether you’re a casual stargazer or someone who quietly tracks space news with mild existential dread, April 2029 is already worth marking in the calendar. The god of chaos is coming to visit, and this time, it’s just passing through.
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