The 305-foot-wide asteroid, named after Apophis, the Egyptian god of chaos and destruction, will pass within 30,000 miles (48,300 kilometers) of Earth in less than half a decade. Scientists have no intention of letting a rare flyby of a space rock this size go to waste.

When Apophis, officially known as (99942) Apophis, makes its closest approach to Earth on April 13, 2029 (a Friday, no less), it will become so prominent above our planet that it will be visible to the naked eye. NASA’s OSIRIS-APEX spacecraft (formerly OSIRIS-REx) will be on hand to personally rendezvous with the Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA). But if things change, a number of small satellites may also join this NASA mission during the rendezvous.

As part of the positive NEAlight project, a team led by aerospace engineer Hakan Kayal from Julius Maximilian University (JMU) Würzburg has unveiled three concepts for such spacecraft. Each of the proposed satellites will aim to take advantage of this asteroid transit, as Earth only experiences it once every thousand years. Aim? Collecting data that could help scientists better understand the solar system and even develop defenses against dangerous asteroids.

As for why Apophis is a suitable target for planetary defense efforts? Discovered in 2004, the asteroid quickly rose to the top of charts measuring the risk of potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs), or asteroids 460 feet (140 meters) wide or more located within 20 miles of the Moon. . Soil.

Both Apophis’ size and how close its orbit is to Earth have led to the asteroid remaining at the top of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) “impact risk list” and NASA’s Sentinel Risk Table for 17 years. That was until a March 2021 flyby of the asteroid (a space rock nearly as wide as the Empire State Building) allowed NASA scientists to determine that Apophis would not, in fact, hit Earth for at least 100 years.

Although we now know that Apophis will not collide with Earth in the next century, its scientific impact in 2029 will still be enormous, and space agencies around the world will be closely monitoring its orbit.