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First he punched an asteroid. Now, the attack of a NASA spacecraft could continue and punch a hole in another space rock.
The OSIRIS-REX spacecraft is on its way back to Earth. briefly — the surface of an asteroid named Bennu to collect samples last year. He’ll come home in 2023 and pull out a capsule full of samples that could help aspiring scientists decipher the origin of Earth’s water and life.
But the spacecraft will have plenty of fuel left. The task force wondered: Could it go elsewhere?
Yes, it turns out. And not just anywhere, but one of the most famous near-Earth asteroids: Apophis.
“We were pretty excited when we found out we could get there,” said Michael Nolan of the University of Arizona, the mission’s science team chief, who presented their findings at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in New Orleans this week.
Apophis was once thought to be the planet-forming asteroid. The biggest threat to the world. After its discovery in 2004, astronomers rated the chance of hitting our planet in 2029 as one in 37, the highest in recorded history for any asteroid. At 1,000 feet in diameter, if it hits it won’t end life on our planet, but it will decimate an area hundreds of kilometers wide.
“It was so scary,” Nolan said.
Updated analyzes later showed that the asteroid dancing around Earth’s orbit would not affect our planet. But it will still pass in April 2029, just 20,000 miles inside the orbits of some geostatic satellites and close enough to be visible to the naked eye in Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Coincidentally, it would be able to reach Apophis if mission controllers on Earth directed OSIRIS-REX to complete three flybys of the planet after dropping their samples. By the time the asteroid flies through our sky, OSIRIS-REX would be just an hour behind and ready to step aside in June 2029.
Dr. “It’s kind of bad luck,” Nolan said.
While Apophis poses no threat to Earth, at least for the next century, studying it can tell us a lot about asteroids of this size. Currently, no other missions are planned to visit Apophis in 2029, but there are offers to do this.
Next month, the OSIRIS-REX team will submit its proposal to NASA to extend the mission, with a decision expected by April. If it continues, it will spend 18 months studying Apophis after the spacecraft arrives.
While OSIRIS-REX was in orbit of Apophis, it would swoop over the surface to take high-resolution images. This will involve looking for evidence of landslides caused by Earth’s gravitational pull as the asteroid flies.
The spacecraft will also attempt to land on the surface and use its thrusters to punch a hole in its surface. The goal will be to uncover underground material to help understand what the asteroid is made of.
Dr. “Apophis is the type of asteroid that is compositionally most likely to become a hazard,” Nolan said. “Its material properties will help us understand what its structure is.”
This, in turn, could inform a future mission to save Earth from Apophis or another asteroid. By deciphering its mass, density and structure, scientists will learn how spongy or hard the asteroid is and tell us how best to deal with similar objects.
“We really need to understand what we’re dealing with,” said Jim Bell, an astronomer at Arizona State University who was not involved in the OSIRIS-REX mission. “Is this a solid piece of rock? Can we change the trajectory of this thing? Can we destroy it, tear it into tiny bits if we have to take drastic measures?”
NASA’s ongoing DART mission, launched last month, performing a not so different experiment by crashing into a small asteroid to see if we can change its orbit.
Davide Farnocchia, of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said the close pass of Apophis is a “great opportunity” to observe an asteroid of this size up close. It will also lead to a better understanding of whether Apophis poses a future threat to Earth.
After Apophis, OSIRIS-REX may even have enough fuel to visit another asteroid. Or Dr. Nolan can be placed on Apophis’ surface and act as a “watching beacon”.
Other issues, such as budgetary constraints or concerns that OSIRIS-REX could unintentionally alter Apophis’ trajectory and make it a threat to Earth, may determine whether the extended mission is approved. But it could be an exciting next chapter for the mission.
Dr. “It takes about once in a thousand years for something this big to come to Earth,” Bell said. “We should take advantage of that.”
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