WASHINGTON — Companies ranging from Blue Origin to a startup are proposing concepts for missions to visit an asteroid before it makes a very close flyby of Earth in five years.
The asteroid Apophis, about 350 meters across, will pass closer to the Earth than geostationary orbit on April 13, 2029, a flyby that scientists say happens only once every thousand years for an asteroid of that size. There is zero chance that the asteroid will hit Earth either in the 2029 flyby or subsequent flybys into the next century, but the close approach is of scientific interest.
NASA has already agreed to send one mission to Apophis, using the main spacecraft for the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission. That mission, rechristened OSIRIS-APEX, will rendezvous with Apophis shortly after the asteroid’s 2029 flyby.
Scientists, though, are interested in sending additional missions to Apophis, particularly those that would fly by or orbit the asteroid before the flyby so that researchers can better the understand what impact tidal forces from the flyby might have on the asteroid. Several such mission concepts were discussed during an April 22–23 workshop at a European Space Agency center in The Netherlands.
That includes a proposal by Blue Origin to use its Blue Ring spacecraft to send payloads to Apophis. That vehicle could carry up to 13 payloads, such as individual instruments or deployable spacecraft, to Apophis, arriving at the asteroid before its closest approach to Earth and remaining there through the flyby.
Steve Squyres, chief scientist at Blue Origin, pitched Blue Ring as a cost-effective, low-risk approach to getting instruments or other spacecraft to Apophis. “This allows the cost to be shared among many different payload providers,” he said, but did not state a cost either for the overall mission or individual payloads. He said the Apophis mission would likely be the fifth Blue Ring mission Blue Origin flies, reducing technical…
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