Monday, October 31, 2022

The new Apophis

Meet the new Venus-crossing asteroid 2022 AP7. 1500 meters wide; bigger than PH27 and a potential danger to Earth. Not counting the latest (and last) data from Puerto Rico.

Apophis got a lot of hype a few decades ago for almost crossing Earth but it has been ruled a "ball", to use the baseball term. They haven't constrained the AP7 strike-zone as yet. This latest article discusses PH27 as if it were new which it is not, although maybe we've constrained its orbit better. 2021 LJ4 is also noted in passing.

AP7 is big enough I'd recommend it for hollowing-out and pushing it into a high Venus orbit, as a station there. Or into "Venus Equilateral". I'm not picky.

It took some doing to catch a low-aphelion asteroid visible - from here - only when the Sun is rising or setting. Congratulations to them. Although I'd be remiss if I didn't remind my readers that if SVL2-halo had a telescope, we'd not need to point it sunward to spot Earth-crossers from 0.7 AU.

Whilst we're here I'd raise a worry about gravitational ricochet. Could a Venus-crosser take some momentum from that planet which pushes it to be an Earth-crosser?

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