NASA Says Earth Tides Will 'Probably Change Spin State' of 'Hazardous' Space Rock on Friday 13th

NASA says a 'potentially hazardous' asteroid called Apophis will pass safely by Earth in April 2029, coming closer than many satellites as it flies over the planet on Friday 13th, and the agency has said Earth's tides will 'probably change [its] spin state.'

The near-Earth object was first spotted in 2004 and quickly earned a frightening reputation. Early calculations suggested that Apophis, named after the ancient Egyptian god of chaos and destruction, could potentially impact Earth in 2029, 2036 or 2068.

That prospect turned the rock into a minor celebrity in doomsday circles and a major headache for scientists who suddenly had to take its orbit extremely seriously.

NASA Rewrites the Risk for 'God of Chaos' Asteroid Apophis

NASA now says there is no risk of impact and, in effect, no need to panic. After years of tracking Apophis with optical telescopes and ground-based radar, the agency says it has refined the asteroid's orbit well enough to rule out a collision for at least 100 years.

In a 2021 update on the 2029 flyby, NASA described Apophis as a 'potentially hazardous asteroid' but stressed it will 'safely pass close to Earth on April 13, 2029.' The updated orbit means the object has been removed from the agency's impact-risk list, and NASA now says there is no chance of a hit for at least the next 100 years, superseding the earlier 2.7 per cent impact probability.

The language from NASA is almost pointedly calm. The asteroid, it says, will come to within about 20,000 miles, or 32,000 kilometres, of Earth's surface. That is actually closer than the orbit of many geosynchronous satellites, which sit at roughly 22,236 miles, or 36,000 kilometres, above the planet. In space terms, that really is a hair's breadth, and scientists know it.

NASA went further in that 2021 note, stating that 'Earth tides will probably change its spin state.' In plain English, the gravitational pull of our planet is expected to tweak how Apophis rotates as it whips past. You can think of it as a cosmic flyby that is just close enough to give the rock a bit of a twist.

NASA Sees a Rare Chance, Not a Doomsday Event

The 2029 pass will be the closest approach by something this large that is currently known, according to NASA. Apophis, based on early measurements, is around 1,230 feet across and shaped a bit like a peanut.

That makes it slightly taller than the Eiffel Tower in Paris, which stands at 1,083 feet. Put that much rock on a near miss with Earth and you can see why people's imaginations run wild.

To recall, initial studies were properly unnerving. An impact from an object that big is generally described by scientists as a very rare, large-scale event, the sort of thing that could flatten a region and disrupt global weather. It is the kind of scenario Hollywood loves, and the internet turns into clickbait almost instantly.

Yet that nightmare timeline is not what NASA's data now supports. After fresh radar observations in 2021, the agency said new measurements had 'eliminated' any credible threat of Apophis hitting Earth in 2029, 2036 or 2068.

Those observations tightened the asteroid's orbital track enough that scientists can say, with some confidence, that our planet is off the hook for at least a century.

That has not stopped the rock being labelled 'the most dangerous in history' by some commentators. Strictly, that is a judgement call rather than an official NASA ranking, but it captures something real. Apophis sits in that unsettling category where it is big enough to matter and close enough to feel personal.

What makes 2029 unusual, and frankly a bit wild, is how public the whole event will be. NASA says Apophis will be visible to the naked eye for several hours as it crosses the evening sky.

No telescope, no apps, just a bright point of light people will be able to watch from back gardens and city balconies. For a space agency that often works at the edge of human perception, that kind of spectacle is gold.

The flyby also offers researchers a rare natural laboratory. Having a skyscraper-sized asteroid pass inside the orbit of major satellites gives scientists an unusual chance to study how such objects respond to strong gravitational fields in real time. They hope to watch for subtle shifts in its spin, look for any surface changes and refine their models of how rocks like this behave.

Apophis is one of roughly 2,000 asteroids, comets and other near-Earth objects that NASA is currently monitoring. The vast majority will never come close enough to trouble us. Even when they do, most burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere.

Catastrophic impacts are vanishingly rare, the last one on that scale being the event that wiped out the dinosaurs around 66 million years ago.

So yes, a 'God of Chaos' asteroid flying 12 times closer than the Moon on a Friday 13th is tailor-made for apocalyptic memes. But in the small print, the story is more about sober monitoring than doom.

As NASA sees it, this is less the end of the world and more a dress rehearsal for understanding the stuff that could one day really threaten it.