They have a short window of 4-plus years to plan excursion to asteroid whizzing by Earth

Apophis will not be a surprise visitor—the large asteroid will come close to Earth on April 13, 2029, which just happens to be Friday the 13th, notes the Washington Post. And while nearly five years may sound like plenty of time for scientists to figure out how to get an up-close look, that window turns out be small one given the complexity of the task. “We’re running out of time,” is how Jason Kalirai of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory puts it. Details:

• The asteroid: It’s the size of a cruise ship and will pass just under 20,000 miles of Earth on its fly-by, per USA Today. Apophis is so big and will come so near our planet—an “exceptionally close fly-by” is the official terminology—that it will be visible with the naked eye.

• The stakes: Scientists have ruled out the possibility of Apophis smacking into Earth, but they say it’s vital to take advantage of this rare opportunity to better understand how to steer a future asteroid away from a potentially cataclysmic collision, per Space.com.
• Scenarios: The European Space Agency has the most advanced plan at the moment. Its proposed Ramses mission would have a satellite meet the asteroid about two months before the fly-by and accompany it the rest of the way, per Gizmodo. Another possibility is having one of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin spacecraft meet it. NASA hopes to study Apophis, too, but a craft repurposed from the OSIRIS-REx mission would not arrive at the asteroid until after the close pass by Earth, notes Space.com.
• Bottom line: “Nature is performing this once-per-several-thousand-years experiment for us,” MIT’s Richard P. Binzel tells the Post. “We have to figure out how to watch.”

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