ESA announces asteroid mission to Apophis
A cartoon showing Apophis’s path in 2029
The European Space Agency (ESA) today announced that is beginning work on an asteroid mission, dubbed Ramses, to the potentially dangerous asteroid Apophis when it makes its next close-fly of the Earth in 2029.
Ramses needs to launch in April 2028 to allow for an arrival at Apophis in February 2029, two months before the close approach. In order to meet this deadline, ESA requested permission to begin preparatory work on the mission as soon as possible using existing resources. This permission has been granted by the Space Safety programme board. The decision whether to commit to the mission in full will take place at ESA’s Ministerial Council Meeting in November 2025.
Using a suite of scientific instruments, the spacecraft will conduct a thorough before-and-after survey of the asteroid’s shape, surface, orbit, rotation and orientation. By analysing how Apophis changes during the flyby, scientists will learn a lot about the response of an asteroid to external forces as well as asteroid composition, interior structure, cohesion, mass, density, and porosity.
Based on the track record of European space projects, which appear to always proceed at a glacial pace with late problems that cause the missions to miss their launch window (with the launch of the Franklin Mars rover as the poster child), the project is getting started far too late to meet its launch date of April 2028. We shall see if Europe surprises us this time and gets the project off the ground as planned.
Right now the only confirmed mission to Apophis is OSIRIS-APEX, which was redirected to the asteroid after it delivered its samples from Bennu to Earth. Many others have been proposed, including a commercial mission, but none appear to be confirmed or under construction.
A cartoon showing Apophis’s path in 2029
The European Space Agency (ESA) today announced that is beginning work on an asteroid mission, dubbed Ramses, to the potentially dangerous asteroid Apophis when it makes its next close-fly of the Earth in 2029.
Ramses needs to launch in April 2028 to allow for an arrival at Apophis in February 2029, two months before the close approach. In order to meet this deadline, ESA requested permission to begin preparatory work on the mission as soon as possible using existing resources. This permission has been granted by the Space Safety programme board. The decision whether to commit to the mission in full will take place at ESA’s Ministerial Council Meeting in November 2025.
Using a suite of scientific instruments, the spacecraft will conduct a thorough before-and-after survey of the asteroid’s shape, surface, orbit, rotation and orientation. By analysing how Apophis changes during the flyby, scientists will learn a lot about the response of an asteroid to external forces as well as asteroid composition, interior structure, cohesion, mass, density, and porosity.
Based on the track record of European space projects, which appear to always proceed at a glacial pace with late problems that cause the missions to miss their launch window (with the launch of the Franklin Mars rover as the poster child), the project is getting started far too late to meet its launch date of April 2028. We shall see if Europe surprises us this time and gets the project off the ground as planned.
Right now the only confirmed mission to Apophis is OSIRIS-APEX, which was redirected to the asteroid after it delivered its samples from Bennu to Earth. Many others have been proposed, including a commercial mission, but none appear to be confirmed or under construction.