‘Demon’ asteroid space rock dubbed Apophis (an ancient Egyptian demon) the size of the EIFFEL TOWER to zoom past Earth Friday.
Apophis the asteroid will return in 2029.
The following written content by Stephanie Pappas
An asteroid the size of the Eiffel Tower will zip past Earth Friday (March 5) and be out of our planetary neighborhood until 2029.
The space rock, dubbed Apophis (an ancient Egyptian demon), was first spotted in 2004 and won’t pose any danger to Earth during this week’s flyby; it will travel past the planet at more than 40 times the distance from Earth to the moon. But scientists are using this week as a dress rehearsal for the asteroid’s next pass, on April 13, 2029, when Apophis will get as close to Earth as some of the highest-orbit satellites.
“Apophis in 2029 is going to be a really incredible observing opportunity for us,” Marina Brozović, a radar scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, told Live Science’s sister site Space.com. “But before we get to 2029, we are preparing.”
A brief flyby
Apophis is 1,120 feet (340-meter-wide) wide and made of rock, iron and nickel. It is probably shaped roughly like a peanut, though astronomers will have a better idea of its form when it passes by Earth this week, according to NASA.
The asteroid takes a full orbit around the sun about every 11 months. On March 5, it will come within 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) of Earth at 8:15 p.m. EST (0115 GMT on March 6). That’s too far to be seen with the naked eye, but scientists will use planetary radar to image Apophis as it flies by using NASA’s Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California and the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. They hope to determine the asteroid’s shape and learn more about the way it rotates.
“We know Apophis is in a very complicated spin state, it’s sort of spinning and tumbling at the same time,” Richard Binzel, a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Space.com. Read more from Live Science.
