Asteroid Apophis closest to the collision with Earth

It is a warning left by researchers at the University of Hawaii’s Institute of Astronomy, who have examined the celestial body and realized that the speed at which it travels is increasing due to something known as the Yarkovsky effect.The asteroid is about 370 meters long and is named after the Egyptian god of chaos, the scrambler, periodically passes close to the Earth, usually in April and October.

Apophis is propelled by sunlight. The Yarkovsky effect of acceleration occurs when some parts of the asteroid heat up faster than others, which implies that the thermal radiation is no longer uniform. Just change your trajectory.

“The new observations, which we got through the Subaru telescope earlier this year, were good enough to reveal Apophis’ Yarkovsky acceleration,” astronomer Dave Tholen said in a news release.

“Prove it the asteroid is moving away from its purely gravitational orbit by about 170 meters per year, which is enough to keep the impact scenario in 2068 on the scene“He added. There is still a lot of time to confirm the hypothesis. So far, the likelihood of impact on April 12, 2068 was 1 in 150,000.

Apophis was discovered on June 19, 2004 by Roy A. Tucker, David J. Tholen and Fabrizio Bernardi at the Kitt Peak National Observatory. Tholen has followed him ever since.
Eyes to 2029
Apophis is expected to pass very close to Earth on April 13, 2029, a Friday, enough to be seen with the naked eye in rural and suburban regions with low light and visible through binoculars elsewhere. This close passage will be visible in Europe, Africa and the western part of Asia.

Astronomers guarantee that there is no possibility of impact with the Earth that day. “We have known for some time that this will not be possible as 2029 approaches,” says Tholen.

Apophis is, however, one of the most followed asteroids in the skies, due to its probability of impact with the Earth.

It is believed that the approach to 2029, 31,000 kilometers above the ground and below the orbit of most geostationary satellites, should substantially alter its path. If Apophis’s orbit after that date resonates with Earth, this will increase the possibility of future impacts.

Constant analysis has already removed the window of a possible impact in 2036, in another of the asteroid’s passages through our planet. But, studies prior to the result of a possible collision on that date predicted that the fall of the Apophis in countries like Colombia and Venezuela, in the expected trajectory, could have caused more than ten million deaths, if the evacuation plans for these areas had not been organized.

The fall into one of the great oceans, Atlantic or Pacific, would instead produce the devastating tsunami with a range of about one thousand kilometers inland to the coasts of North America, Brazil and Africa, three thousand kilometers in Japan and 4,500 kilometers for some areas of Hawaii.On average, Earth receives the impact of an asteroid the size of Apofis once every 80,000 years.

In 2005, former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart had asked to be transponder on the asteroid, for more accurate tracking.

Before Tholen’s current conclusions about the Yarkovsky effect were known, and according to NASA’s program that studies nearby objects, it was predicted that on April 12, 2068 and October 15, 2069, Apophis would approach approximately 120 kilometers above ground , under the satellites, which admitted a considerable impact window.

This won’t even be our planet’s first reason for a potentially dangerous asteroid. In July of this year, a space object the size of a “pyramid”, large enough to destroy a city, narrowly missed Earth.

NASA only detected it three weeks before the move.