Apophis- 13 year old boy corrects NASA

Apohis, a 390 meter wide asteroid was discovered in June 2003, and made headlines in December of 2004 because of its probability to impact Earth with the equivalent of 100,000 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb in 2029.

Then another story circulated the internet, though it was not collabarated by NASA. A 13 year old german boy said the trajectory did not take into account the probability of the Asteroid Apophis hitting our satellites and changing its trajectory during 2029, to again return and hit the earth on 2036. And that NASA miscalcuated its trajectory as computed for his shool science project. NASA afraid of ridicule , stated it was still sticking to its original estimate and that the probability was miniscule.

Apophis trajectory will be examined more closely in 2012 and 2013 and the trajectory will again be revised. This next rendezvous will give scientist a chance to examine its spin rate and brightness which will give us a more precise trajectory. The more radiation from the sun it absorbs the faster its trajectory and spin, giving it a slightly different trajectory over the course of years. We also need to take into account the pull of other objects on Apophis in space which can also change its path. If in 2029 it does go through earths precise gravitational keyhole thats 600 meters accros then it will return to hit us , 7 years later . If it is determined with certainty it will hit us in 2036 then we can do some things to change its trajectory. One proposed idea is to put large reflecting Mylar material that reflects sunlight to heat up the asteroid enough and change its course. Another proposed idea is to send a bomb to blow it up, but that may create more smaller Asteroids that will surely be attracted to earth gravitational pull. I bet this is best because if they break up into small enough rocks they will burn up in our atmosphere.

On the question given by the 13 year old -what about an impact in space with a man made satellite? if this occured it would be like a bug on a windshield and would only change its trajectory a few meters. If Apophis did hit the earth or even landed in the ocean there would be a large cloud of dust kicked up into our atmosphere from the impact that would be equivelant to an 880-Megaton bomb, the dust would last years , and the planet might experience a cooling effect and some crops will fail. All nearby coastlines would be obliterated. We should be able to see Apophis skim our atmosphere in 2029. an asteroid this size hits earth every 800 years, unless you count the Tunguska event of 1908, a mysterious explosion over Siberia (most likely an exploding Asteroid in our atmosphere) that packed as much energy as 10-15-megatons or the equivalent of 1,000 Hiroshima bombs or about 1/3 the power of the Tsar Bomba(the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated). So you can see a difference, the 15 Megaton Tungaska Meteroid or Bolide knocked over 80 million trees ,over 800 square miles of of forest. By contrast a 30 meter(30 feet) in diameter Asteroid has the same power as the bomb dropped on Nagasaki and we are hit with these more than once a year, but most explode or burn up in our atmosphere before causing any damage to our earth or us.The Brazilian Tunguska of 1930 which also burned and depopulated parts of the Amazon remains a mystery. In June 2002 a military satellite detected a 12 Kiloton explosion attributed to an Asteroid that remained undetected. Objects as small as the one that caused the Tunguska event are to small to detect by present day observations.Was this this Crater left by the tunguska event? Lake Cheko.