ESA sets sights on Apophis asteroid with Ramses mission

In 2029, a massive asteroid called Apophis is expected to whizz close to Earth. So close, in fact, that it will come within one tenth of the distance between the Earth and Moon. Now, the European Space Agency is rushing to put together its latest mission, Ramses, which will hopefully rendezvous with the asteroid and watch the approach firsthand.

The mission is called the Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety—or Ramses—and the ESA is hoping to launch it by 2028. That is, of course, a very ambitious timeline, especially since the ESA has quite a few budgeting quirks to overcome, like the fact Ramses isn’t even fully funded yet.

However, if the ESA is able to pull off its proposed launch for the Ramses mission, it will allow the spacecraft to reach the asteroid two months before it flies past the Earth. That’s far earlier than NASA’s own OSIRIS-REx mission will reach the asteroid, though REx did have to drop off a payload of asteroid material from Bennu before it could head that way.

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NASA has previously set down on an asteroid using its OSIRIS-REx probe. The Ramses mission could become the second mission of its type to do such a thing. Image source: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona

It is an incredibly rare event for asteroids the size of Apophis to come this close to Earth, let alone for them to hit our planet. Thankfully, we won’t have to worry about this Empire State building-sized asteroid colliding with the Earth—at least not anytime soon.

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The Ramses mission will stick around the asteroid for around six months after it reaches Apophis, offering priceless information about the asteroid before and after its close flyby of Earth. The hope is that observations will give us a good view of how the asteroid responds to the tug of Earth’s gravity.

The ESA hopes to further the mission by equipping it with a smaller, deployable companion that can touch down on Apophis before the encounter to capture a firsthand, ground-based report. However, we’ll have to wait to see just how much the ESA can pull off of this ambitious mission.

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