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Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ Cometary and Asteroid Missions _ CAST considers landing mission on Apophis in 2029

Posted by: Yeh Nov 13 2014, 05:15 AM

http://tech.sina.com.cn/d/2014-11-10/doc-icfkptvx4508331.shtml

In Chinese, so I just translate a few key points:

Purple Mountain Observatory (PMO) and CAST is now developing digging+analysing robots used on asteroid exploration. PI: Ji Jianghui (who has been the PI of CE2 flyby to Toutatis). Apophis is on the candidate list, among with a C-type NEO (my educated guess: 1996 FG3). The news noted that the whole thing is still "conceptional", but they usually won't say a word unless they have been seriously working on it...

Still 15 years away, but absolutely something great to expect! Will certainly keep an eye on it.

Posted by: Explorer1 Nov 13 2014, 05:49 AM

Seeing earthrises from an asteroid's perspective during a flyby? Now that would be impressive!

Posted by: mcgyver Dec 24 2014, 04:45 PM

QUOTE (Explorer1 @ Nov 13 2014, 06:49 AM)

Seeing earthrises from an asteroid's perspective during a flyby? Now that would be impressive!

Seeing Apophis smashing onto Earth from probe orbiting Apophis, that would be impressive!
More seriously, also the time lapse of Apophis-Earth near-miss from asteroid perspective would be great too.

Posted by: Paolo Dec 24 2014, 04:58 PM

what would be really interesting to see is the response of the asteroid to the gravity of Earth. if it's a rubble pile it may change shape or spawn a moonlet, but even if it's monolithic, it may change of spin axis orientation. this is why some space agencies (the French CNES for example) are calling for an Apophis lander to carry a seismometer to be launched before 2029.