Target Earth
It was just after 9 p.m. on June 18, 2001 at an observatory in Arizona, USA. David hole an astronomer from the University of Hawaii was scanning the sky for asteroids' when he noticed an object headed in the direction of Earth. He and his colleagues hoped take a closer look later that week bur were unfortunately prevented by rain, By the rime astronomers finally got another look at it in December of that year, they realized they had a problem. The object was a large asteroid, which they named Apophis after the Egyptian god of evil. Bigger than a sports arena, it comes frighteningly close to our planet every few years. By Christmas, Tholen had calculated that the chance Apophis would smash into Earth on April 13, 2029, was one in 40
Alarm about the threat started spread the public. Then, on December 26, 2004, a real catastrophe struck: the Indian Ocean tsunami, which claimed hundreds of thousands of thousands of lives The public forgot about Apophis, Meanwhile astronomers had found earlier images of the asteroid asteroid. The extra data enabled the scientists to calculate its orbit, and they discovered da it would actually fly safely by Earth in 2029 However, this alarming scenario started a rare among scientists to find solutions to the threat of large objects striking Earth