European Space Agency announces mission to study Apophis asteroid

The European Space Agency will allow a proposed mission to the asteroid Apophis to proceed to a next stage of development to keep it on schedule even though it is not yet fully funded.

ESA announced July 16 that its space safety program, which includes planetary defense, has given the Ramses mission permission to begin preparatory work for the mission, which is designed to visit Apophis before that asteroid makes a very close flyby of Earth in April 2029.

Ramses, or Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety, would use the same spacecraft bus as ESA’s Hera mission, scheduled to launch this October to visit the asteroid Didymos, whose moon Dimorphos was the target of NASA’s DART mission to deflect its orbit. Ramses will carry two cubesats for additional studies of the asteroid.

Apophis is already the destination for one mission, NASA’s OSIRIS-APEX spacecraft, the main spacecraft used for the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission.

OSIRIS-APEX will arrive at Apophis shortly after the flyby, but scientists are eager to study the asteroid before its close approach to see if the gravitational effects of the close flyby Apophis will travel closer to the Earth than satellites in geostationary orbit affect the asteroid.

Ramses is designed to launch in April 2028 and arrive at Apophis in February 2029, studying the asteroid before and after its Earth flyby.

ESA members will decide on funding Ramses at its next ministerial meeting in late 2025, but Michel said waiting until then would make it impossible to build and launch the spacecraft in time to arrive at Apophis before the flyby.