Un vaisseau spatial de la Nasa, qui est récemment revenu d'une mission sur l'astéroïde Bennu, a été relancé afin d'étudier son confrère Apophis, qui porte le nom du dieu égyptien du Chaos, alors que ce dernier se rapproche de l'orbite terrestre.
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00:00 A NASA spacecraft, which has recently returned from a mission on the asteroid Bennu,
00:04 was launched to study its brother Apophis,
00:07 which bears the name of the Egyptian god of chaos,
00:09 as it approaches the Earth's orbit.
00:12 The rocky body should pass less than 32,000 km from the surface of the globe on April 13, 2029.
00:18 Its name is not the most reassuring.
00:21 While the asteroid named Apophis,
00:23 named after the Egyptian god of chaos,
00:25 approaches the Earth's orbit,
00:27 a NASA spacecraft, which has recently returned from space,
00:30 was launched for a study mission of this rock about 370 meters in diameter,
00:35 announced on Friday, December 22 by the American Space Agency.
00:38 The date is set for April 13, 2029.
00:42 So it remains a little more than five years before the rocky body of about 40 to 50 million tons
00:47 approaches the blue planet,
00:49 at a distance lower than that which separates us from certain artificial satellites.
00:53 An extremely close flyover which,
00:56 as NASA recalls,
00:57 has never occurred in history since humanity has been able to observe
01:00 and record this type of astronomical phenomenon.
01:03 If in Egyptian mythology,
01:06 Apophis, god in the form of a snake and incarnation of darkness and the end of the world,
01:10 seeks to annihilate the divine creation,
01:12 the asteroid which bears his name however does not have the same project for the Earth.
01:15 But its passage,
01:17 planned at less than 32,000 km from the surface of the globe,
01:20 could make it visible to the naked eye in the eastern hemisphere,
01:23 covering the Asian continent,
01:24 the Indian Ocean,
01:26 Australia,
01:27 most of the African continent and the European continent,
01:30 part of the Pacific Ocean and Antarctica.
01:32 Explain the before, anticipate the after.
01:35 After a journey of 7 years and 4 billion km,
01:39 the space ship Osiris Rex,
01:40 which last September brought a sample of the naked asteroid,
01:44 still had fuel and thus set off on a mission to Apophis.
01:47 Cost of the mission extension, 200 billion dollars.
01:52 Several other destinations had been considered,
01:55 like Venus,
01:56 but it was Apophis that was retained.
01:58 An asteroid of type S,
02:01 composed of silicate and nickel-iron materials,
02:03 which is distinguished from asteroids of type C,
02:06 rich in carbon like the Bennu.
02:07 The space ship was renamed for the occasion to the Iriapex Origins,
02:12 Spectral Interpretation,
02:14 Resource Identification,
02:15 and Security,
02:16 Apophis Explorer.
02:17 On April 13, 2029,
02:20 Apophis will sail the Earth and will be permanently accompanied by the ship
02:24 which will approach up to 25 meters from its surface
02:26 to extract as much information as possible,
02:28 in order to study in particular how the surface is changing
02:31 by interacting with terrestrial gravity,
02:33 announced to Mi Simon,
02:35 scientific manager of the mission at Goddard Space Flight Center
02:38 of NASA in Greenbelt,
02:39 in Maryland.
02:40 As explained by NASA,
02:43 the close encounter of Apophis with the Earth
02:45 will change the orbit of the asteroid
02:46 and the duration of its 30.6-hour day.
02:50 This encounter could then cause earthquakes
02:52 and landslides to the surface of the asteroid,
02:55 which would allow in this case to stir up matter.
02:57 "We know that tidal forces and debris accumulation
03:01 are fundamental processes that could play a role
03:03 in the formation of planets,"
03:04 explains Danny Mendoza de la Justina,
03:07 chief researcher of the Oziri Apex mission
03:09 at the University of Tucson, Arizona.
03:11 "It could enlighten us on how we went from the debris
03:15 of the primitive solar system to entire planets.
03:19 While most of the potentially dangerous asteroids known,
03:21 of which the orbit is approaching less than 4.6 million km from the Earth,
03:25 are also type S,
03:27 the exploration of Apophis could contribute to research
03:29 in the field of planetary defense,
03:31 an absolute priority for NASA.
03:33 The hypothesis of a collision with the Earth is false.
03:36 The discovery, in 2004 at the Kitpik Observatory, Arizona,
03:41 of the gigantic aerolite god of chaos,
03:43 first aroused concern
03:45 and still feeds today some theories spread out
03:47 on social networks
03:48 concerning a alleged collision with the Earth.
03:51 "Apophis is coming, that's why they're building their bunker,"
03:55 one can read from a user of X, ex-Twitter.
03:58 In the early days of his study,
04:00 the asteroid had been classified at level 4 on the Turin scale,
04:04 serving to categorize from 0 to 10
04:06 the risks of impact from geocruisers,
04:08 such as asteroids or comets,
04:10 which made it a unique case.
04:11 But in December 2004,
04:14 a few months after the discovery of the asteroid,
04:17 the scientific community had shown
04:19 that it was ultimately very unlikely
04:20 that it would play the part of the troublemakers.
04:22 Even more, in June 2021,
04:26 the passage of Apophis to only 17 million kilometers from the Earth
04:29 has made it possible to definitively rule out the hypothesis of a collision,
04:32 NASA assuring that its orbit would certainly allow
04:34 to exclude any impact for at least the next 100 years at the very least.
04:37 Sweeping a denouement like a "don't look up",
04:40 the NASA Earth Near-Earth Objects Research Center
04:43 has even officially stripped Apophis
04:44 of the list of "celestial bodies at risk".
04:47 After the asteroid passed near Earth,
04:50 OSIRI APEX operated near it for the next 18 months
04:53 to study in particular the changes caused to Apophis
04:56 by its proximity to Earth.