‘God Of Chaos' Asteroid: It's Exactly Four Years Until The Rarest Space Event Of Our Lives

Forbes

13-04-2025

Precisely four years from today — on Friday, April 13, 2029 — an asteroid as wide as the Empire State Building is wide will come closer to Earth than orbiting geosynchronous satellites in a very rare event. Apophis will not impact Earth, but could its remarkably close pass store up trouble for the future? If so, the close pass is a chance to gather data critical for humanity's future.
Asteroid 99942 Apophis (named for the serpent god of chaos in ancient Egypt) is a 1,100-foot (340-meter) wide space rock that will get to within 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) of our planet.
If Apophis did strike Earth, it could spread devastation across a radius of hundreds of miles, according to Space.com, killing millions of people if it struck a highly populated metropolitan area.
At a gathering of scientists this week in Tokyo, Japan, plans were unveiled during the Apophis T-4 Years Workshop for radar observations before, during and after the approach, with one abstract describing the close encounter as a chance for a 'once-per-thousand-year natural science opportunity.'
According to NASA, when Apophis was discovered in 2004, scientists calculated that it might strike Earth in 2029, 2036 or 2068. Its orbit has since been refined a few times, and, as it stands, we're safe — for now.
However, it's possible that the gravitational effect on Apophis of Earth on April 29, 2029, could cause it to alter its trajectory slightly and be a danger in the future. So could a chance encounter with another asteroid in deep space.
For now, its future trajectory is unknowable, but scientists are certain of one thing — we should use its close pass in 2029 to study it closely. After all, in 2060 or 2068, it could one day live up to its 'God of Chaos' moniker.
Asteroid 99942 Apophis (named for the serpent god of chaos in ancient Egypt) is a 1,100-foot (340-meter) wide space rock that will get to within 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) of our planet.
'On April 13, 2029, all of Earth will be watching,' reads an abstract from Richard Binzel, professor of planetary sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and inventor of the Torino Scale that categorizes the impact hazard of near-Earth objects. 'Apophis will be visible to the naked eye speeding across the evening sky for an estimated two billion people spanning western Europe and western Africa."
It already has. In October 2022, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART — the world's first full-scale planetary defense mission — saw a 500kg spacecraft smash into binary asteroid 65803 Didymos and its moonlet Dimorphos at 15,000 miles per hour. It successfully changed its orbit slightly, proving that one day, it might be possible to nudge a dangerous asteroid onto a safe trajectory. DART's inspiration? Apophis.
The European Space Agency's Rapid Apophis Mission for SEcurity and Safety (RAMSES) mission will likely launch in spring 2028 and reach Apophis in February 2029, just prior to its close encounter with Earth. That will give scientists data on how Apophis interacts with Earth's gravity — 'a rare natural experiment that may not occur again for thousands of years,' according to another abstract — and how it physically changes after the close encounter. NASA's OSIRIS–Apophis Explorer (APEX) mission will rendezvous with Apophis just after it's closely passed Earth in 2029 and orbit it until November 2030 to see how its trajectory changes.
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