An asteroid the size of the Eiffel Tower will zip past Earth on Friday (March 5) and will be out of our planetary neighborhood until 2029.
The space rock, known as Apophis (ancient Egyptian demon), was first seen in 2004 and will not pose a threat to Earth during this week’s flight; it will travel past the planet at more than 40 times the distance from Earth to the moon.
But scientists are using this week as a uniform prediction for the next pass of the asteroid, on April 13, 2029, when Apophis will get as close to Earth as some of the highest-orbit satellites .
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“Apophis in 2029 is going to be a real viewing opportunity for us,” said Marina Brozović, a radar scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, on the sister site of Live Science at Space.com. “But before we get to 2029, we’re preparing.”
A short flyby
The apophis is 1,120 feet (340-meters wide) wide and is made of rock, iron and nickel. It may be shaped very much like a peanut, although astronomers will have a better idea of its shape when it passes Earth this week, according to NASA.
The asteroid takes a complete orbit around the sun about every 11 months. On March 5, it will come within 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) of the Earth at 8:15 pm EST (0115 GMT on March 6).
That’s too long to see with the naked eye, but scientists use planetary radar to image Apophis as it flies using NASA’s California Deep Space Communication Center and Telescope. ‘Green Bank in West Virginia. They hope to determine the shape of the asteroid and learn more about its orbit.
“We know that Apophis is in a very complex spinning state, it’s kind of spinning and diving at the same time,” Richard Binzel, a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Space.com.
Coming closer
This planetary radar study will provide researchers with a baseline for the flight much closer in 2029, when Apophis will get as close as 19,800 miles (31,900 kilometers) to Earth.
That is close enough that the gravity of the Earth could alter the shape of the asteroid or scatter the boulders on its surface. How and if the asteroid changes how it flies will help reveal details about the asteroid’s internal structure, Binzel said.
At its closest approach in 2029, Apophis will be visible to the naked eye across western Australia, becoming as clear as the stars in the Big Dipper.
It will be closer to Earth at 6pm EDT on April 13, 2029, when it will cross the Atlantic Ocean – an ocean it will cross in just an hour. The asteroid will cross the United States by 7pm EDT.
Apophis is named after an ancient Egyptian demon who symbolized chaos and evil, largely because astronomers first estimated that there was a 3 percent chance that the asteroid could invade Earth on Earth. 2029 flyby aige.
They have now shown that the asteroid will not hit the Earth in 2029, or the next way in 2036.
There is still some chance that the asteroid could hit Earth in 2068, but the 2021 and 2029 flybys should give astronauts more information to work out the future of Apophis.
This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article here.