Asteroid Apophis less likely to collide with Earth

William Atkins
Thursday, 08 October 2009 18:59

Science - Space

This trajectory of Apophis in the year 2029 places it within the orbits of geosynchronous communication satellites around Earth.

And, people on Earth should be able to visibly see the asteroid pass without the aid of any optical equipment, such as binoculars or telescopes.

Apophis will also make a close encounters with Earth in 2068. The chance of a collision with Earth at this time is also minimal (about 3-in-1,000,000, or 0.0003%).

Astronomers will be making further calculations to produce a better estimate of this chance of collision

JPL scientist Don Yeomans states, "The refined orbital determination further reinforces that Apophis is an asteroid we can look to as an opportunity for exciting science and not something that should be feared. The public can follow along as we continue to study Apophis and other near-Earth objects by visiting us on our AsteroidWatch Web site and by following us on the @AsteroidWatch Twitter feed." [Space.com, with links inserted]

There are several monitoring systems around the world tracking near-Earth objects such as asteroids and comets. Two of them are NASA’s Sentry and the Universities of Pisa (Italy) and Valladolid’s (Spain) NEODyS (Near Earth Objects Dynamic Site).