Beyond Bennu: OSIRIS-APEX and the Exploration of Near-Earth Asteroid Apophis
The OSIRIS-APophis EXplorer mission is the second life of one of NASA’s great success stories in planetary science. The spacecraft, launched in 2016 as OSIRIS-REx, spent two years orbiting the carbon-rich asteroid Bennu before collecting a sample and delivering it safely to Earth in September 2023. After dropping off its cargo, the spacecraft and its instruments remained healthy, so NASA extended the mission and gave it a new target and a new name: asteroid Apophis, named after the ancient Egyptian god of chaos, and OSIRIS-APEX. On April 13, 2029, the 340-meter-wide Apophis will fly past Earth at ~32,000 kilometers distance, closer than our highest-altitude satellites, making it the largest object to pass this near to Earth in recorded history. Earth’s gravitational pull is expected to alter the asteroid’s orbit, change how fast it spins, and possibly trigger quakes or landslides on its surface. OSIRIS-APEX will chase Apophis past the Earth and use Earth’s gravity to redirect the spacecraft toward a rendezvous with Apophis, beginning an 18-month science campaign in mid-2029. As part of that campaign, Apophis will be the first S-type asteroid to be characterized from orbit in the extended near infrared region (~2.7 – 4 µm) and by thermal infrared spectroscopy (5.7-100 µm). Near the mission’s end, the spacecraft will fire its thrusters to excavate surface material, allowing a look at the asteroid’s subsurface.
Dr. Vicky Hamilton is a geoscientist specializing in infrared spectroscopy of minerals, meteorites, and planetary samples. She has extensive experience with science and instrument operations on numerous NASA planetary science flight missions. She is the Deputy Principal Investigator of the Mars Odyssey THEMIS instrument and the L’TES instrument on the Lucy spacecraft. She was a Participating Scientist with the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity and is a Co-Investigator and Instrument Scientist for OTES on OSIRIS-REx and OSIRIS-APEX. She led the OSIRIS-REx Spectral Analysis Working Groups during operations and sample analysis was the Mission Sample Spectroscopy Scientist. Hamilton chaired the Panel on Mars for the most recent National Academies Decadal Survey in Planetary Science and just concluded a three-year term as the Chair of the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group, a community-based, interdisciplinary forum representing the interests of the Mars science community.
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