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Armada to Apophis—scientists recycle old ideas for rare asteroid encounter
"It will miss the Earth. It will miss the Earth. It will miss the Earth."
If ESA member states grant full approval for development next year, the RAMSES spacecraft will accompany Apophis throughout its flyby with Earth, collecting imagery and other scientific measurements before, during, and after closest approach. "There is still so much we have yet to learn about asteroids, but, until now, we have had to travel deep into the Solar System to study them and perform experiments ourselves to interact with their surface," said Patrick Michel, a planetary scientist at the French National Center for Scientific Research and principal investigator on the Hera mission. NASA is steering the spacecraft, already in space after its use on the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission, toward a rendezvous with Apophis in 2029, but it won't arrive at its new target until a few weeks after its close flyby of Earth.
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