A cartoon (not to scale) showing Apophis’s
path in 2029.

Though planning for this Russian mission to the potentially dangerous asteroid Apophis has apparently been uncertain for years, according to Russian officials in mid-September the mission is still in development with a launch is now targeting the end of 2028.

[I]n April 2026, the Director of the Skobeltsyn Nuclear Physics Institute, Eduard Bryus said that his organization was working on the mission to Apophis using a “cubesat” or a similar small-class spacecraft, which could rendezvous with the asteroid. The landing and soil sampling was also under consideration, according to the scientist. Around the same time, Viktor Sadovnichiy, the influential head of the Moscow State University, MGU, which oversaw Skobeltsyn Institute, seemingly endorsed the mission, saying that the trip of a Russian spacecraft to Apophis would help predicting asteroid threat.

In September 2026, Skobeltsin NIIYaF re-confirmed that the small-class spacecraft designated MKA MGU-Apophis and its mission had been under development with the launch scheduled at the end of 2028.

I have added this mission to the list below of all the probes presently scheduled to visit Apophis when it makes its next close pass of the Earth on April 13, 2029. Based on past Russian history for the past three decades, however, we should not be surprised if this mission ends up not getting launched.

• Osiris-Apex, already on its way to Apophis after completing its asteroid mission to Bennu.
• Ramses, a European mission scheduled to launch in 2028 on Japan’s H3 rocket, on which will be these additional probes:
  • Farinella, built by a partnership of the Italian Space Agency and Terran Orbital
  • Don Quijote: a cubesat lander being built by EMXYS
  • Destiny+, built by Japan’s space agency JAXA. It will first fly past Apophis, then head to its prime target, the asteroid Phaethon
  • A radar cubesat being built Tyvak
• AphophisExL, a private mission being built by the startup Exlabs, which will also deploy two smaller landers built as part of a Japanese university student project.
• START: A Chinese cubesat being built by students at Tsinghua University.
• MKA MGU-Apophis: A Russian cubesat to be launched by the end of 2028.