3 ms·
> 2029's visit will be particularly close, with the asteroid coming within 32,000 kilometers (20,000 miles) of the Earth's surface Wow, that is incredibly clos
by cypherpunks01 2y ago
> 2029's visit will be particularly close, with the asteroid coming within 32,000 kilometers (20,000 miles) of the Earth's surface
Wow, that is incredibly close. 20,000 miles is about how far you fly round-trip from JFK to Singapore.
> The OSIRIS-APEX spacecraft will dip toward the surface of Apophis and fire its engines to kick up loose rocks and dust
Just hearing this scares me (knowing nothing about orbital physics). I am just imagining a couple generations down the line astronomers saying, well, this asteroid used to not be a concern, except one time we went up there and kicked some rocks around, which accidentally set it onto a direct course for Earth in 2150..
- hyperliner 2y ago[dead]
- Jensson 2y agoI think the gravitational pull from earth is many orders of magnitude greater deviation there in a chaotic way than anything our engines would do.
- b112 2y agoBenevolent future AIs sent the rock, to deviate our orbit 1.2% further from the sun, to help with global warming.
- sandworm101 2y agoAny alteration made by such a tiny spacecraft is so small that it becomes lost in the background noise of other unpredictable factors. An object this size is likely regularly struck by small rocks anyway. And osiris-apex has already altered the orbit slightly simply by approaching, landing or not.
- spydum 2y agofrom one of the articles I read on this, the plan is to get within 16 FEET of the rock and fire the thrusters.. Thats some crazy precision for sure, especially considering this was a secondary mission for the spacecraft