Near Earth orbit asteroid's

Question

Is it true that an asteroid has been detected that will cross Earths orbit, and it's path will take it as close as within the orbits of some satellites in 2028. Also, if said asteroid takes a certain path, it will swing around and 7 years later land in the Pacific ocean. This asteroid is suppose to be large enough to fill the rose bowl.

If this is true where can I find out more.

Answer 1

Yes, this is all true. The asteroid is called "Apophis", after an Egyptian god of death. Wikipedia has a solid article about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apoph...

Fortunately, NASA estimates a only 1 in 45,000 chance of collision. The oft-cited claim that a German schoolboy "corrected" this to 1 in 450 are totally unsubstantiated. NASA has said that the cause of the "correction" would not actually occur, and furthermore, no mathematical basis was ever put forward for the idea.

Answer 2

What you are describing (if you really mean 2028) is from a CNN news item of...

March 1998 (old news).

Asteroid 1997 XF11 (now known as minor planet 35396) preliminary orbit was quite uncertain and, at the margin of uncertainty, included Earth.

Once the orbit was refined (with more observations), it was found that 35396 will pass well beyond the Earth-Moon distance (more than twice as far as the Moon) on October 26, 2028.

--- If you meant 2029:

Minor planet 99942 Apophis will pass by in 2029 at an estimated distance which could be as close as the geosynchronous satellites (35,786 km above Earth's surface).  It will come by again in 2036.

At one time, after it was found that Apophis would not hit in 2029, someone calculated that if it passed at exactly some precise distance from Earth, this would change its orbit just enough for Apophis to hit us the next time around.

This distance was called the "keyhole".  If Apophis hits the keyhole, then it could hit Earth in 2036.

Since August 2006, it looks like Apophis will miss the keyhole.

The orbit of Apophis is even more precisely known than 35396, because Apophis was "seen" by radar.