The Apophis asteroid, which will fly near the Earth in five years, will most likely not touch the orbit of geostationary satellites, but there is a possibility that one of the devices will “shoot down”, one of them will crash. satellites will be shot down. Nikolai Zheleznov, a senior researcher at the Institute of Applied Astronomy (IPA) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, warned about this in an interview. RIA News.
“It will probably fly away and not hit anyone. <…> The theoretical possibility, however small, always exists,” said the scientist.
According to preliminary calculations, the celestial body will fly slightly away from the fixed satellites of the Earth, since satellites, as a rule, move above the equator with a high orbital inclination.
According to Zheleznov’s prediction, a potentially dangerous asteroid will still “attach” to the orbit of satellites, but will be able to disable “at most one” spacecraft, which will not threaten noticeable consequences for the planet and its inhabitants.
Nikolai Zheleznov, formerly senior researcher at the Institute of Applied Astronomy (IPA) of the Russian Academy of Sciences warnedThat the potentially dangerous asteroid Apophis, which will fly to a record close distance (32 thousand km) to the Earth in 2029, if it falls on the planet, can destroy an area comparable to some regions of the Russian Federation.
Before on Earth reached Capsule containing 250 grams of rock from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu, whose age is estimated to be approximately 2 billion years.