Asteroid Apophis Could Still Hit Earth in 2068, New Measurements Suggest

Only a small handful of objects are known to pose a serious threat to Earth, and the gigantic asteroid Apophis is one of them. Scientists are now re-evaluating its potential to strike our planet in 48 years, owing to improved observations of the problematic asteroid.

Observations made earlier this year from the Subaru Telescope in Hawai’i are providing astronomers with a better sense of how the Yarkovsky effect is influencing the orbital path of asteroid 99942 Apophis. This effect is like a built-in propulsion system for asteroids, in which trace amounts of leaking radiation can alter an object’s momentum in space, causing it to drift ever-so-slightly from the path otherwise chosen by gravity.

“Without taking Yarkovsky drift into account, Apophis is still a threatening object, just not in 2068,” Dave Tholen, a researcher from the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawai’i and a co-author of the pending study, explained in an email. “With Yarkovsky taken into account, the 2068 impact scenario is still in play. Small, but non-zero.”

Tholen, along with Davide Farnocchia from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, crunched the new numbers, finding that Yarkovsky acceleration is keeping the Apophis threat inside the 2068 window. Their findings are laid out in new research presented at the 2020 virtual meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society.

Apophis currently owns the title of third-highest threat on NASA’s Sentry Risk Table. The estimate on the Palermo Technical Impact Hazard Scale suggests there’s a 1 in 150,000 chance of Apophis hitting Earth on April 12, 2068 (mark your calendars). Or, if you prefer percentages, that’s a 0.00067% chance of Earth impact. Tholen said the odds are actually closer to 1 in 530,000, a figure used by the NEODyS impact monitor service, which includes a nominal Yarkovsky drift rate. The new analysis will result in a revised threat risk for Apophis, but even then, Tholen said we’ll need “to be careful with this calculation,” as there will be other variables to consider. And indeed, we should expect to see the odds change over time as astronomers get a better handle on this asteroid’s itinerary.

A collision with Earth—as improbable as it appears to be—would be seriously bad. Apophis, packed with nickel and iron, measures over 1,000 feet (300 meters) wide, or over three football fields, if that’s how you like to picture it. An impact with the surface would release the equivalent of 1,151 megatons of TNT. Such a calamitous event happens on Earth around once every 80,000 years.

Understandably, therefore, scientists are keeping a close watch on Apophis to improve their estimates. When the near-Earth asteroid was discovered in 2004, for example, astronomers initially assigned a horrific 2.7% chance of an Earth impact in 2029. Astronomers have since ruled this out as a possibility, along with a possible impact in 2036. As for the 2068 encounter, that cannot be ruled…