Scientists urge NASA to act on Apophis mission concept
by Jeff Foust, Space News - May 19, 2025
https://spacenews.com/scientists-urge-nasa-to-act-on-apophis-mission-concept/
Scientists are urging NASA to act quickly on concepts for repurposing a pair of NASA smallsats to visit an asteroid before it makes a very close approach to Earth in less than four years. Recommendations recently published from the Apophis T-4 Years Workshop held last month in Tokyo called on NASA to act on responses it received from a request for information (RFI) last fall about how to use the twin Janus smallsats to visit the near Earth asteroid Apophis before it swings by Earth in April 2029.
The Janus spacecraft were built to perform flybys of other asteroids, but NASA canceled that original mission and put the spacecraft in storage when delays in the Psyche mission, on which Janus was a rideshare, kept Janus from carrying out that mission. Scientists have since then suggested that the Janus spacecraft could instead be used to study Apophis before it swings by Earth, complementing observations planned after the flyby. ….
ESA Awards Contract for Probe That Will Land on Earth-Skimming Asteroid
By Andrew Parsonson, European Spaceflight -May 20, 2025
https://europeanspaceflight.com/esa-awards-contract-for-probe-that-will-land-on-earth-skimming-asteroid/
ESA has awarded a contract for the second CubeSat for its Ramses mission, which will study asteroid Apophis as it passes within 32,000 kilometres of Earth. The Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety (Ramses) mission was first announced in July 2024 and is being managed under ESA’s Space Safety Programme. The mission will consist of one primary probe and two CubeSats. Together, the satellites will study the 375-metre asteroid’s composition while observing how it reacts to Earth’s gravitational pull.
On 17 October, ESA announced that it had awarded a €63 million contract to OHB Italia for the mission’s consolidation and early implementation phases. In March 2025, the agency awarded Tyvak International a €4.7 million contract to develop the first of the two CubeSats for the mission. This CubeSat will feature a dust analyser to examine material released from the asteroid’s surface, as well as a low-frequency radar instrument to study its internal structure. On 20 May, ESA announced that it had awarded a €1.5 million contract to Spanish satellite electronics manufacturer Emxys, which will lead a consortium to deliver the second of two CubeSats. This CubeSat will be deployed from the primary spacecraft a few kilometres from the asteroid and will study its shape and geological properties. It will then perform an autonomous approach before attempting to land on the asteroid’s surface. If successful, it will collect data on the asteroid’s seismic activity. ….