Private company to land on asteroid Apophis as it flies close to Earth

Two landers from a private US company will be part of an armada to asteroid Apophis when it flies past Earth in 2029.

Apophis, about 400 metres across, was discovered in 2004. Initial calculations showed it had an alarmingly high chance of hitting Earth – up to 2.7 per cent – in April 2029, in which case it could destroy an area the size of a city. Later refinements showed there was no chance of impact for at least 100 years.

Nevertheless, on 13 April 2029, the asteroid will pass extremely close to Earth, just 32,000 kilometres away, closer than geostationary satellites and near enough that it will be visible to the naked eye, a once-in-thousands-of-years event for an asteroid of this size. Multiple spacecraft from the US, Europe, Japan and China are planning to study the asteroid before, during and after the flyby.

Among those missions, the US company ExLabs has announced that its mothership spacecraft, called ApophisExL, passed a key review phase ahead of a planned launch in 2028. It will carry up to 10 spacecraft and instruments from different customers, including two landers, one from an unnamed source, and another from Japan’s Chiba Institute of Technology.

“The goal is to gain images from the surface of the asteroid,” says Miguel Pascual, the chief science officer and co-founder of ExLabs. “There’s some really exciting science that can happen.”

No private company has ever landed on an asteroid, although US asteroid mining firm Astroforge plans to launch a mission this year to land on an asteroid.

ExLabs will deploy the Chiba Institute of Technology’s lander, which is the size of a shoebox, from 400 metres above Apophis. It will then descend at about 10 centimetres a second, gently touching down on the surface after an hour, with a camera taking images.

The landing will take place up to a week after Apophis’s flyby of Earth, to prevent any chance of accidentally changing the asteroid’s trajectory. Any collision in the lead-up to the flyby would be magnified by Earth’s gravity, says Pascual.

The European-Japanese mission to Apophis, called Ramses (Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety), will also include a lander, says Patrick Michel at Côte d’Azur University, the mission’s project scientist. It will touch down a few days before the flyby and will use a seismometer to measure any landslides caused by Earth’s gravitational tug – and could even record the touchdowns of ExLabs’ landers.

“Any opportunity to touch and feel the softness or hardness of the surface is great,” says Michel.

However, Michel urges effective communication between all the missions to ensure they run smoothly and don’t run into each other. “It is important that we coordinate,” he says. “The world will be watching. We don’t want to screw up.”