ESA moves forward with Apophis mission preparations

On 13 April 2029, the 375 m asteroid Apophis will pass within 32 000 km of Earth’s surface – less than one tenth of the distance from Earth to the Moon. This extremely rare natural phenomenon will draw the attention of the entire world and offer a unique opportunity for scientific and planetary defence research.

During the flyby, strong tidal forces will strain the asteroid and likely reveal new material from beneath the surface. A spacecraft at Apophis could observe these changes and teach scientists a lot about the asteroid’s composition and structure, as well as how an asteroid responds to external forces. We must understand these properties if we ever hope to be capable of knocking a hazardous asteroid off a collision course with Earth.

ESA will propose such a mission for approval and funding at its next Ministerial Council Meeting in 2025 as the next Planetary Defence mission in its Space Safety Programme. The spacecraft will be based on an adaptation of Hera, ESA’s first asteroid mission, which successfully launched on 7 October 2024.

However, the Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety (Ramses) would need to launch in early 2028 in order to arrive at Apophis in time to study it as it passes Earth. Therefore, in July 2024, ESA’s Member States approved the use of existing Agency funds to begin preparatory work on the mission’s Consolidation / Early Implementation phase.

This work will ensure that, if the Ramses mission receives full support in 2025, its implementation is feasible within this very strict timeline.

The funds were made available via ESA’s General Support Technology Programme and Space Safety Programme, and ESA, industry and all relevant stakeholders have worked together tirelessly to minimise the time required to convert the funds into a contract.

On Thursday 17 October, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher and OHB Italia Managing Director Roberto Aceti signed a contract worth €63 million at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Milan that will enable the work to begin.

The funds will be used to begin the procurement process for certain time-critical or long-lead equipment, as well as to finalise the overall design of the spacecraft while considering the opportunities for international cooperation currently under discussion.

“By developing and launching the Hera mission on time and under budget, we have demonstrated that ESA and its industrial and scientific partners can meet the challenging deadlines required by asteroid missions,” says ESA’s Paolo Martino, who is overseeing the work.

“With Ramses we are raising the bar even further, so we need to act now to ensure that, if our Member States decide to support the mission in 2025, we can hit the ground running and reach Apophis in time.”