Although its main mission is now complete, the journey of OSIRIS-REx is only half-done as NASA re-routes it to study near-Earth asteroid 99942 Apophis.
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in 2029. The blue dots are the many man-made satellites that orbit our planet, and the pink represents the International Space Station.OSIRIS-APEX will reach asteroid Apophis before April 13, 2029, when it’s thought that Apophis could come within 19,400 miles of Earth—within the orbits of Earth’s geostationary satellites. A paperin 2004 indicated that it could strike Earth on that date, but that has since been ruled out.
However, the Apophis flyby in 2029 is proving to be too tempting a planetary defense opportunity for space agencies. While orbiting Apophis for 18 months OSIRIS-APEX will approach its surface and fire its thrusters, as it did at Bennu, to expose the asteroid’s sub-surface. Since Apophis will make even closer passes of Earth in 2060 and 2068, NASA wants to know as much as possible about it as far in advance as it can.
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