Remember when Orson Welles’ 1938 radio show called “The War of the Worlds” fooled people into thinking that Earth was actually being invaded? That was fun.
Now, the ESA (European Space Agency) is tempting fate by live-tweeting the hypothetical approach of the hypothetical asteroid 2019PDC and hypothetically planning a hypothetical response to this hypothetically destructive asteroid. In their hypothetical scenario, 2019 PDC has a 1 in 10 chance of striking Earth in 2029. And you can follow the action on Twitter.
During its close approach this week, observatories from ESA and NASA have made some updates on their assessment of asteroid Apophis and its future encounters with Earth. While the Herschel Space Telescope observations indicates the asteroid is bigger and less reflective than first estimated, scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have effectively ruled out the possibility that this asteroid will impact Earth during a close flyby in 2036.
Repeat after me: Asteroid Apophis is not a threat to Earth in 2029 or 2036. Got that doomsday prognosticators?
Discovered in 2004, Apophis garnered lots of attention when initial calculations of its orbit indicated a 2.7 percent possibility of an Earth impact during a close flyby in 2029. Data discovered during a search of old astronomical images provided the additional information required to rule out the 2029 impact scenario, but a remote possibility of one in 2036 remained – until now.
Herschel provided the first thermal infrared observations of Apophis at different wavelengths, which together with optical measurements helped refine estimates of the asteroid’s properties. Previous estimates bracketed the asteroid’s average diameter at 270 ± 60 m; the new Herschel observations returned a more precise diameter of 325 ± 15 m.
“The 20% increase in diameter, from 270 to 325 m, translates into a 75% increase in our estimates of the asteroid’s volume or mass,” says Thomas Müller of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, who is leading the analysis of the new data.
By analyzing the heat emitted by Apophis, Herschel also provided a new estimate of the asteroid’s albedo – a measure of its reflectivity – of 0.23. This value means that 23% of the sunlight falling onto the asteroid is reflected; the rest is absorbed and heats up the asteroid. The previous albedo estimate for Apophis was 0.33.
Knowing the thermal properties of an asteroid indicates how its orbit might be altered due to subtle heating by the Sun. Known as the Yarkovsky effect, the heating and cooling cycle of a small body as it rotates and as its distance from the Sun changes can instigate long-term changes to the asteroid’s orbit.
Additional data from the Magdalena Ridge Observatory in New Mexico, the Pan-STARRS observatory in Hawaii and the Goldstone Solar System Radar have provided more conclusive evidence when scientists ran the numbers.
“We have effectively ruled out the possibility of an Earth impact by Apophis in 2036,” said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL. “The impact odds as they stand now are less than one in a million, which makes us comfortable saying we can effectively rule out an Earth impact in 2036. Our interest in asteroid Apophis will essentially be for its scientific interest for the foreseeable future.”
But the flyby on April 13, 2029 will be one for the record books, scientists say. On that date, Apophis will become the closest flyby of an asteroid of its size when it comes no closer than 31,300 kilometers (19,400 miles) above Earth’s surface.
“But much sooner, a closer approach by a lesser-known asteroid is going to occur in the middle of next month when a 40-meter-sized asteroid, 2012 DA14, flies safely past Earth’s surface at about 17,200 miles,” said Yeomans. “With new telescopes coming online, the upgrade of existing telescopes and the continued refinement of our orbital determination process, there’s never a dull moment working on near-Earth objects.”
Goldstone radar observations of Apophis will continue through January 17th, and additional tracking is planned next month with the Arecibo radio dish in Puerto Rico, which should provide even more refinements in Apophis’ orbit.
Asteroid Apophis continues to be an object of interest for astronomers. Even though the possibility of an Earth impact by the now-famous asteroid has been ruled out during its upcoming close encounter on April 13, 2029, this close flyby will significantly change Apophis’s orbit, and astronomers are uncertain how that could affect future encounters with our planet. For that reason, astronomers have been eager to obtain new data to further refine the details of the 2029 encounter. However, for three years, the asteroid’s orbit had it “hiding” behind the Sun, but it has now emerged. This newest image of Apophis was taken on January 31, 2011, using the University of Hawaii’s 2.2-meter telescope on Mauna Kea, and astronomers from UH at Manoa say they will make repeated observations of this potentially dangerous near-Earth asteroid.
Astronomers measure the position of an asteroid by comparing with the known positions of stars that appear in the same image as the asteroid. As a result, any tiny error in the catalog of star positions, due for example to the very slow motions of the stars around the center of our Milky Way galaxy, can affect the measurement of the position of the asteroid.
“We will need to repeat the observation on several different nights using different stars to average out this source of imprecision before we will be able to significantly improve the orbit of Apophis and therefore the details of the 2029 close approach and future impact possibilities,” said astronomer David Tholen, one of the co-discoverers of Apophis, who made the latest observations along with graduate students Marco Micheli and Garrett Elliott.
They obtained the new images when the 270-meter (900-foot) diameter asteroid was less than 44 degrees from the sun and about a million times fainter than the faintest star that the average human eye can see without optical aid.
The astronomers will be taking advantage of Apophis’s position for the next few months, as its elliptical orbit around the Sun will take it back into the sun’s glare this summer, making observations – and measurements of its position – impossible. However, in 2012, Apophis will again become observable for approximately nine months. In 2013, the asteroid will pass close enough to Earth for ultraprecise radar signals to be bounced off its surface.
“Radar observations are important because we can estimate orbital parameters and provides us lots of information about an asteroid’s surface features and internal structure, and how they may have formed,” said Lance Benner, an astronomer at JPL, who specializes in radar imaging of near-Earth asteroids. “We need to know these things if we are going to deflect one of these.” Speaking at the American Geophysical Union conference in 2009, Benner said radar is the most powerful astronomical technique for both finding new asteroids and measuring their orbits.
“We can measure their velocity to less than 1mm per second, and do this up to 20 million kilometers from earth. Radar helps us compute the trajectory much farther into the future – even up to 300 years, giving us much more advance notice.” Benner said they can routinely image asteroids at 7.5 meters per pixel, and a new system at the Goldstone radar facility will be able to get the resolution down to 1 meter per pixel.
On April 13, 2029, Apophis will come closer to Earth than the geosynchronous communications satellites that orbit Earth at an altitude of about 36,000 km (22,000 miles). Astronomers say Apophis will then be briefly visible to the naked eye as a fast-moving starlike object.
It must have been a slow news day in Russia yesterday (actually – and unfortunately — it wasn’t)… as headlines from one of Russia’s leading news agencies, Ria Novosti, proclaimed, “Russian Astronomers Predict Apophis-Earth Collision in 2036.” But reading the article a little further, the astronomer, Leonid Sokolov of St. Petersburg State University says the chance of a collision in 2036 is extremely slim, which is exactly what NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program has been saying for several years. So, just to be clear, there is no new information or changes in understanding Apophis’ orbit. Here are the facts: