Moon-Yeon Cheon “Goal for direct exploration of Apophis when approaching again in 8 years”
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(Daejeon = Yonhap News) Reporter Park Joo-young = The asteroid Apophis approached the Earth on the 6th and passed through.
According to the Korea Astronomical Research Institute on the 11th, the asteroid Apophis, with a diameter of 370m, approached 16.8 million km from Earth at 10:15 am on the 6th and passed around the Earth at a speed of 4.58 km per second.
Since its first discovery in 2004, Apophis is a celestial object that has been steadily raised with the possibility of a collision with the Earth. It is similar in size to Seoul 63 City (249m) and N Seoul Tower (233m).
On the 10th, Moon-Yeon Cheon photographed Apophis using its own space object electron optical surveillance system (OWL-Net) in Lemon Mountain, Arizona.
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After this approach, Apophis is expected to pass very close to Earth at 6:46 am on April 14, 2029.
At this time, the distance from the earth is 37,000 km.
This is 4,000 km closer than geostationary satellites such as Cheonrian and Mugunghwa.
The odds of an Apophis-sized asteroid approaching this close to Earth are very slim, at least once every 1,000 years.
In 2029, Cheon Mun-yeon is designing a probe with the goal of directly exploring the Apophis asteroid in a companion flight (rendezvous, orbiting horizontally together).
Senior Researcher Kim Myung-jin said, “The proximity of an asteroid to the Earth means that it is a good condition for the probe to reach the asteroid with little fuel. “We are doing asteroid tracking research.”
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2021/03/11 15:55 sent