Satellite to follow Empire State Building-sized asteroid as it zips by Earth

There’s a huge asteroid coming our way in 2029 and the European Space Agency (ESA) wants to track it every step of the way.

Don’t worry, you can look up with confidence, as the 1,230-feet-long (about 375 meters) Apophis asteroid is not on a collision course with Earth. But zipping by at a distance of just 20,000 miles (about 32,000 kilometers), it’ll be coming remarkably close.

As part of ongoing research into planetary defense, ESA has announced it’s received permission to embark on preparatory work for the Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety (Ramses).

The plan is to have the Ramses spacecraft rendezvous with Apophis and accompany it through what ESA says is a “safe but exceptionally close flyby” of Earth in five years from now.

Using data gathered by Ramses, researchers will study the asteroid as Earth’s gravity alters its physical characteristics. It’s hoped that the findings will help to improve our ability to defend Earth from any similar object that’s calculated to be on a collision course in the future.

Commenting on the mission, Patrick Michel, director of research at CNRS at Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, said: “There is still so much we have yet to learn about asteroids but, until now, we have had to travel deep into the solar system to study them and perform experiments ourselves to interact with their surface.

“For the first time ever, nature is bringing one to us and conducting the experiment itself. All we need to do is watch as Apophis is stretched and squeezed by strong tidal forces that may trigger landslides and other disturbances [on the asteroid] and reveal new material from beneath the surface.”

ESA needs to work efficiently on preparations for the mission, as Ramses has to launch in April 2028 to be able to rendezvous with Apophis in February 2029, two months before the close approach.

In a 2022 test to see if it could alter the course of an asteroid, NASA singled out one in deep space and deliberately crashed a spacecraft into it. Subsequent research found that the impact did indeed change the rock’s trajectory, offering hope of an effective solution for protecting Earth from asteroids spotted coming our way.