Question: How Big is Apophis?
Answer: In case you haven’t heard, Asteroid 99942 Apophis is a near Earth asteroid that astronomers think will make a close flyby to the Earth in 2029. When its trajectory was first calculated back in 2004, it had one of the closest visits to Earth astronomers had seen, and had a 2.7% chance of hitting the Earth.
But follow-up observations brought that risk down to 1 in 45,000. Right now, astronomers think that Apophis is essentially no risk to the Earth. In April, 2008 media reported that a 13-year old German student had caught a math mistake made by NASA, and the risk of an Earth strike was actually 1-45. This later turned out to be a hoax.
Because of its close approach to Earth, space advocacy societies, including the Planetary Society think that the Apophis asteroid would make an ideal target for a human mission, and allow engineers to test out strategies for moving asteroids away from dangerous Earth-crossing orbits.
So back to the original question, how big is Apophis? The best estimate puts it at 270 meters (885 feet across), and it has a mass of 2.1 x 1010 kg. To give you a sense of scale, the Eiffel Tower in Paris is 324 meters tall.
But now you know its mass and size, you’re probably wondering: what would happen to the Earth if it struck? NASA estimated that a strike by Apophis would release the equivalent of 880 megatons of energy. Just as a comparison, the object that carved out Meteor Crater in Arizona probably released 3-10 megatons of energy.
If Apophis struck land, it would flatten thousands of square km of land, killing millions of people if it hit a densely populated area. But it wouldn’t cause the kinds of long term climate destruction that 1 km and larger asteroids can do. If it hit an ocean, it would create devastating tsunamis in all directions.