South Korea cancels Apophis asteroid probe: report
South Korea has canceled its effort to visit the space rock Apophis during a close, but harmless, flyby of our Earth in 2029, according to a media report.
The country’s science ministry says the proposed Apophis mission had a “lack of technical capabilities” that rendered the concept “unfeasible,” SpaceNews reported (opens in new tab) June 7. Ultimately, the ministry decided not to request the nearly $308 million it wanted to run the mission.
“The mission involved launching a robotic spacecraft between July 2026 and January 2027 to accompany Apophis as it whips by Earth in April 2029,” SpaceNews added. “The probe would observe and map Apophis the whole way, looking for changes in its structure due to its close encounter with Earth and the planet’s gravitational forces.”
Related: Huge asteroid Apophis revealed in photos
South Korea is a 2021 signatory of the NASA-led Artemis accords for peaceful space exploration, particularly of the moon, and plans its own lunar missions in the 2030s.
Early examinations of Apophis suggested it had a statistically unlikely, but still feasible, chance of hitting Earth in 2068. But newer analysis in the last year shows the asteroid doesn’t pose a threat for at least the last century. (NASA continues to keep an eye out for problems, but decades of scanning with partner telescopes have yielded no immediately worrisome near-Earth objects.)
Shin Won-sik, a science ministry official with South Korea, confirmed the cancelation of his country’s mission to SpaceNews, but added the country is considering more asteroid missions in the future. The country’s forthcoming fourth revision of its space development plan should include something “a bit more concrete and realistic” than what was feasible with the Apophis mission, he said.
The third revision (opens in new tab) of the plan, released in February 2018, had few technical details about the mission, SpaceNews added. Work on the fourth revision should begin in the second half of 2022, Shin said.
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While South Korea is not expected to visit the once-notorious asteroid any more, there are other plans in the works to take advantage of the unique 2029 opportunity, many still in the mission concept stage.
In April, NASA announced its ongoing asteroid-scooping OSIRIS-REx mission, which stands for the Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer, will be repurposed to visit Apophis. The mission will also acquire a new moniker: OSIRIS-APEX, which is short for OSIRIS-Apophis Explorer.
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
Source: space.com
July 6, 2022 @ 1:12 am
Hello there. My name is Princess Fluffy Butt and after an encounter i had today, I think it's important to say a few words. On the off chance a cheater is reading this, personally i don't give a damn if you're cheating alone or with your buddies who are cool with it. After all games are about having fun and if this is how you like to play that is totally fine. But in the moment you step into my lobby or anyone else's for that matter, i expect you to disable those cheats. I don't care if you cheated your whole progress, but the moment i catch you cheating, or i have a strong suspicion of you cheating regardless of how far we are in the mission/DD, you're out. And believe me, after 600 hrs i have a pretty good idea of what's possible in this game.
Now the reason why i am typing this. Today i was hosting a lobby for an escort mission. I was playing on haz 4 and i had a few “greenbeards” join in. Among them was an engineer and his name was in “chinese” letters. Unusual, but i had a few people join with the same kind of names before. This guy had player around lvl 25, and the first thing i notice is him whipping out the grenade launcher and spraying small groups of bugs like crazy, wasting ammo pretty much. I just thought to myself, oh maybe he is just new.. whatever you know. So we carry on. Second odd thing was, his hp never went down which on haz 4 is highly unusual in it's own right. But what tipped me off was, after we arrived to the room the hearthstone was in, his ammo was full. Now i know for a fact that engi is extremely ammo hungry class. So when i see you with full ammo gauge and i know for a fact that we didn't call a resupply pod, i know you're a cheater. Whoever you were, i am sorry i kicked you at the end of a mission. But i won't tolerate this. Even if this cheat doesn't change the overall payout/result of a mission. Managing your resources is a key part of this game. And i won't let a cheater disturb this balance. Even if we are on the loosing side. Such tense moment are one of the best this game has to offer. And i won't stand a cheater running the experience.
So, i call to the fellow greybeards. If you're hosting a game, watch out for some fishy behaviour. It's up to us to protect our future greybeards in the making. The last thing we want is for a cheater to give us unlimited amount of ex and credits at the end of a mission. Rock and Stone brothers and sisters!