WASHINGTON — Various companies, including Blue Origin and a startup, are suggesting plans for missions to visit an asteroid before it passes very close to Earth in five years.
The asteroid Apophis, which is about 350 meters wide, will come closer to the Earth than geostationary orbit on April 13, 2029. Scientists say that this type of close flyby occurs only once every thousand years for an asteroid of its size. There is no chance of the asteroid hitting Earth during the 2029 flyby or subsequent flybys into the next century, but the close approach is of great interest to scientists.
NASA has already agreed to send a mission to Apophis using the main spacecraft for the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission. This mission, which has been renamed OSIRIS-APEX, will rendezvous with Apophis shortly after the asteroid’s 2029 flyby. rechristened OSIRIS-APEX, will rendezvous with Apophis shortly after the asteroid’s 2029 flyby.
However, scientists are interested in sending additional missions to Apophis, especially those that would fly by or orbit the asteroid before the flyby to better understand the impact that tidal forces from the flyby might have on the asteroid. Several such mission concepts were discussed during an April 22–23 workshop at a European Space Agency center in The Netherlands.
This includes a proposal by Blue Origin to use its Blue Ring spacecraft to send payloads to Apophis. The vehicle could transport up to 13 payloads, such as individual instruments or deployable spacecraft, to Apophis. It would arrive at the asteroid before its closest approach to Earth and stay there through the flyby.
Steve Squyres, chief scientist at Blue Origin, suggested Blue Ring as a cost-effective, low-risk method to get instruments or other spacecraft to Apophis. He mentioned that “This allows the cost to be shared among many different payload providers” but did not specify the cost for the overall mission or individual payloads. He stated that the Apophis mission would likely be the fifth Blue Ring mission Blue Origin conducts, reducing technical risk.
He presented a very preliminary and conservative mission profile that showed the Blue Ring mission launching in October 2027 — ironically on a Falcon 9 and not the company’s own New Glenn vehicle — arriving at Apophis in January 2029 carrying two metric tons of payload. He admitted that “We haven’t optimized this yet. We can do better,” and mentioned the possibility of using New Glenn to launch the mission.
Another concept presented at the workshop gives new life to a proposal previously studied by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory called the Distributed Radar Observations of Interior Distributions (DROID), which would send a spacecraft to rendezvous with Apophis and deploy two cubesats to perform a “CAT scan” of the asteroid’s interior, as stated by JPL’s Lorraine Fesq.
The DROID team is now collaborating with startup Exploration Labs, or ExLabs, which has plans for its own Apophis mission and long-term goals for asteroid mining. Fesq mentioned that “We got very creative and came up with this new business model.”
Caltech, which operates JPL for NASA, is establishing a partnership with ExLabs where the company finances a Phase A design study for the mission. Caltech will seek private funding for the later development phases of the mission, whose cost is undisclosed. This would allow the mission to proceed with a launch by May 2028 and arrival at the asteroid in February 2029.
Tom Cooley, who was previously the chief scientist for the Space Vehicles Directorate at the Air Force Research Lab and is now the senior vice president of ExLabs, expressed that the collaboration with JPL was a great opportunity for technology transfer and for gaining a better understanding of reaching an asteroid. He shared this during a separate presentation at the workshop.
The mission would utilize the company’s Space Exploration and Resource Vehicle, also known as SERV, which is currently being developed. Cooley explained that the spacecraft can carry additional equipment from other users in addition to DROID.
The workshop included various presentations on mission ideas that could explore Apophis before its Earth flyby, complementing OSIRIS-APEX. One promising concept involves repurposing the Janus spacecraft, initially part of a NASA program for flying by binary asteroids. However, delays in the launch of Psyche, the mission Janus was to accompany, meant that Janus could not fulfill its original purpose. The delay in the launch of Psyche meant that Janus was unable to carry out its original mission. As a result, the spacecraft, which was essentially complete, was placed in storage.
The European Space Agency is exploring two mission concepts for Apophis. One, called Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety (RAMSES), is based on the Hera asteroid mission set to launch later this year. Another mission, a cubesat named Satis, would be more affordable to develop but would carry higher risk.
A common theme in the discussions of mission concepts at the meeting was funding, or the lack thereof. NASA has previously stated that its restricted planetary science budget is unable to accommodate new missions, even those involving a repurposed set of spacecraft like Janus. This was reiterated by agency officials during the workshop. A challenge for RAMSES is that work on the mission, including obtaining important spacecraft components, needs to commence before member states convene for the next major ministerial meeting in late 2025 to approve funding for the mission. During a discussion towards the end of the two-day meeting, Squyres expressed hope that agencies might collaborate on some form of Apophis mission. He stated, “What we hear from one after another after another is that we don’t have the resources available” for an individual mission. He added, “I can’t help but hope that the ensemble of those space agencies, together, worldwide, have the resources, if we can find a way to pool the resources of multiple space agencies to pull something off soon. This is achievable.”Various companies, from Blue Origin to a startup, are proposing mission concepts to explore an asteroid before it approaches very close to Earth in five years.
Squyres, in a discussion near the end of the two-day meeting, expressed hope that agencies might be able to join forces on an Apophis mission of some kind. “What we hear from one after another after another is that we don’t have the resources available,” to do a mission individually, he said. “I can’t help but hope that the ensemble of those space agencies, together, worldwide, have the resources, if we can find a way to pool the resources of multiple space agencies to pull something off soon. This a doable thing.”
