Zero Percent Chance of Impact — And the Actual Reason Apophis Still Keeps Scientists Up at Night
Apophis (99942 Apophis), a 370-meter asteroid, will pass within just 32,000 kilometers of Earth on Friday, April 13, 2029 — closer than the geostationary satellite belt and roughly one-twelfth the distance to the Moon, a close-approach event with an estimated recurrence frequency of once per ten thousand years. In May 2026, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) formalized the joint Ramses mission through a binding bilateral agreement, with the primary scientific objective of observing unprecedented tidal deformation as Earth's gravitational field physically reshapes the asteroid in real time during the flyby. Despite a formally confirmed zero percent impact probability for the next hundred years, the mission commands a budget approaching 300 million euros, driven by the strategic imperative to acquire first-ever empirical physical data on near-Earth asteroid behavior following the DART kinetic impactor success of 2022. The United Nations has designated 2029 as the International Year of Asteroid Awareness and Planetary Defence, and approximately two billion people across Europe, Africa, and Asia are projected to observe Apophis with the naked eye — making it the first Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA) in history visible without optical instruments. NASA's conspicuous absence from the Ramses framework signals an emerging Euro-Asian axis in space exploration and previews a more multipolar planetary defense governance structure for the 2030s, marking a meaningful fracture in the U.S.-centric post-Artemis space order.