The story of the remnants of comets and asteroids falling to Earth is a frequent occurrence in recent movies.
In the movie Armageddon, to prevent a collision with an asteroid flying to Earth, a spaceship is launched and a bomb is placed on the asteroid.
This scene, which you can only see in movies, may become a reality in the near future.
In fact, an asteroid is approaching Earth.
The name of the asteroid is Apophis.
It is named after the giant snake that fights the sun god Ra in ancient Egyptian mythology.
The problem is that this asteroid is heading towards Earth.
According to predictions, Apophis is closest to Earth in April 2029.
Asteroids have a scale called the Turin Scale, which is graded from 0 to 10 by combining the probability of a collision and the amount of damage in the event of a collision.
In 2004, Apophis received the highest rating of 4 in human history.
The probability of a collision in 2029 is 2.7%.
What will happen if you fall on Earth?
It is ten times more powerful than an atomic bomb.
Just imagining it is terrifying.
In 2004, when the theory of the Apophis collision was widely reported in the media, scholars studied the orbit of Apophis precisely.
In this way, the Korean Astronomy and Space Science Institute also takes pictures. Fortunately, last year, it was tentatively concluded that Apophis would pass close to the Earth but would not collide.
At close proximity, Apophis is 31,000 kilometers away, which is only one-tenth the distance between Earth and the Moon.
Is it far away?
This is a distance closer than the height of a clairvoyant satellite launched by Korea, and it is only once in 1,000 years that an asteroid enters Earth's orbit.
Falling asteroids or meteorites is not something anyone else is talking about, shall we take a look at this picture?
Gyeongnam Hapcheon Basin, now a village.
A meteorite fell 50,000 years ago, and it became such a wide plain.
As asteroids revolve around the sun, their orbits change each time they pass heavy planets like Earth, so you can't stay put.
So, NASA is conducting research to change the orbit of asteroids in case these asteroids come flying.
It's called the 'dart project', and if this dart is a spaceship, it is to see if the orbit can be artificially changed by colliding the spaceship with an asteroid.
Currently, a spacecraft has been sent toward an asteroid called Dimorphus, and a collision test will be conducted around September next year.
It would be a problem if it did damage to Earth, but an asteroid approaching is not necessarily bad luck.
Asteroids are rich in mineral resources. Let's take a look at this asteroid named 'Psyky'.
It is a huge asteroid with a diameter of 200 km, and it is here that the NASA probe will go in 2026.
Some claim that this asteroid is worth about 1,000 dollars, or 120 years of our money, because it is actually a super-giant mass of metal floating in space.
Earth's gravity has attracted most of the heavy metal elements inward, so there's less metal on the surface.
By the way, it is estimated that 30% of the current surface of this psyche is metal.
There is a hypothesis that this asteroid has more metal because it fell from the inside of another protoplanet, and it is analyzed that it could be easier to mine.
Japan has already brought surface samples from asteroids twice, and a spacecraft sent by the US NASA is also returning with a 60g sample.
Many of the asteroids currently orbiting between Mars and Jupiter could also be our resources.
So, in 2029, Korea is also planning to send a probe to the nearby Apophis to start exploring asteroids in earnest.
(Video coverage: Kim Won-bae·Cho Chang-hyeon, video editing: Lee Seung-hee, CG: Jo Su-in·Shim Su-hyeon, Source: NASA ESA JAXA)