![\"Richard](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/KOZLJ7VT6JFMDE4RXKOWTRVL7I.jpg\")
Richard Binzel, professor of planetary science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. <\/p>\nWhere will you be on April 13th, 2029? <\/p>\n
If the skies are clear that evening, step outside just after sunset. Somewhere in the fading light, a small point will be moving \u2013 not a satellite, not a plane, but an asteroid. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s called Apophis. And for the first time in recorded human history, an asteroid of this size will pass close enough to Earth to be visible to the naked eye. <\/p>\n
It sounds like the premise of a disaster film. But this is not that story. <\/p>\n
Apophis will not hit Earth. Its orbit is now known with remarkable precision. Scientists are describing the encounter as something far rarer: a once-in-a-millennium opportunity to observe how an asteroid behaves under the pull of Earth\u2019s gravity. <\/p>\n
Long before that moment arrives, however, another challenge is already under way \u2013 not tracking the asteroid, but explaining it. That\u2019s because when people hear the terms \u201casteroid\u201d and \u201cclose approach\u201d in the same sentence, they tend to imagine the worst. <\/p>\n
At the European Planetary Science Congress last September, one talk cut cleanly through that instinctive fear. The speaker was Richard Binzel, a professor of planetary science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (aka MIT), whose career has unfolded alongside some of the most important moments in modern astronomy. <\/p>\n
Binzel has spent decades studying asteroids, but he is perhaps best known for helping the rest of us to understand when not to panic. <\/p>\n
Richard Binzel, professor of planetary science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. <\/p>\n
In the 1990s, as astronomers began detecting more near-Earth objects, they faced a dilemma. Early observations often came with uncertainty. An asteroid might appear to have a small chance of impacting upon Earth decades into the future because its precise orbit was not yet fully known. <\/p>\n
What should be done with that information? For Binzel, the answer was clear. \u201cWe have to report what we know when we know it,\u201d he says. But that created a second challenge \u2013 how to communicate risk without amplifying fear. <\/p>\n
Binzel\u2019s solution was the Torino Scale, a simple system that ranks asteroid risks from zero upwards. Most objects fall at zero; there\u2019s no threat, no cause for concern. The system\u2019s goal, Binzel explains, was to be \u201cinformative but not alarming\u201d. <\/p>\n
It is a deceptively powerful idea. Because in 2029, when Apophis appears in our skies, billions of people will be watching, and what they feel in that moment will depend not just on the science, but on how that science has been communicated. <\/p>\n
When I spoke to Binzel, he had just settled into a sabbatical in Paris. What was meant to be a short interview quickly became something else; a wide-ranging conversation that moved from asteroids to Pluto, from early mentors to the future of planetary defence. <\/p>\n
Binzel\u2019s ability to tell these stories is rooted in his own. He grew up under dark skies in rural Ohio, where his grandfather, a chemical engineer, would take him outside at night and point out the stars. The books he was given were far beyond his level, but he read them anyway, again and again, until they began to make sense. <\/p>\n
As a teenager, Binzel spotted a small advertisement in the US magazine Sky & Telescope for an astronomy summer camp. He applied, was accepted and it changed everything. <\/p>\n
The camp was run by a young astronomer named Joseph Patterson, whose enthusiasm for teaching drew in a generation of future scientists, among them a young Neil deGrasse Tyson. Binzel would go on to publish his first scientific paper at just 15. <\/p>\n
Looking back, Binzel describes luck differently. \u201cThe definition of luck,\u201d he says, \u201cis when preparation meets opportunity.\u201d From there, he found himself repeatedly at the edges of discovery. <\/p>\n
As a student, Binzel worked with Eugene Shoemaker, a pioneer of planetary science who had once hoped to travel to the Moon as an astronaut, but instead trained the Apollo crews who would go in his place. <\/p>\n
Another turning point came in 1978, when Binzel happened to be present on the day Pluto\u2019s moon was discovered. <\/p>\n
Pluto, a distant and much-loved icy world at the edge of the solar system, was long thought to be alone. The discovery of its largest moon, Charon, transformed it into a system, allowing scientists to measure its mass and begin to understand its nature. <\/p>\n
[\u00a0Apophis asteroid will miss us in 2036 but remains threatOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Years later, Binzel would observe one of the key events that confirmed that relationship, watching as Charon passed in front of Pluto and subtly altered the light reaching Earth. \u201cI\u2019m the only one in the world who knows this is real,\u201d he remembers thinking, as the data came in before dawn. <\/p>\n Moments like that are rare. Most of science, Binzel says, is slow, methodical work, building layer upon layer until, occasionally, something reveals itself. <\/p>\n Apophis is different. Discovered in 2004, the asteroid initially appeared, albeit briefly, to pose a small risk of impacting upon Earth. For a few days, it rose to level 4 on the Torino Scale, the highest ever recorded. But as more data came in, that risk quickly disappeared. <\/p>\n Today, scientists are unequivocal. It will pass safely. It is, Binzel emphasises, a \u201csafe passage by the Earth\u201d; not a threat, but an opportunity. <\/p>\n Apophis is a near-Earth asteroid, a fragment from the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, gradually nudged over time into an orbit that crosses Earth\u2019s path. On April 13th, 2029, it will pass within 32,000km of our planet; closer than many satellites. <\/p>\n Encounters like this are thought to happen only once every thousand years. \u201cNature is handing us a once-in-a-millennium opportunity,\u201d Binzel explains. And space agencies are preparing to meet that opportunity. <\/p>\n The European Space Agency\u2019s<\/a> Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety (Ramses) will arrive at Apophis before its close approach, observing how its shape, surface and motion respond to Earth\u2019s gravitational pull, and helping scientists to better understand how asteroids behave. <\/p>\n Meanwhile, Nasa<\/a>\u2019s OSIRIS-REX spacecraft, short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security \u2013 Regolith Explorer, collected samples from the asteroid Bennu in 2020 and returned them to Earth in 2023<\/a>. <\/p>\n The spacecraft has since been repurposed as OSIRIS-APEX, the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security\u2013Apophis Explorer mission. <\/p>\n It will rendezvous with Apophis, studying how the asteroid\u2019s surface, shape and motion may have been altered by Earth\u2019s gravitational pull \u2013 a rare chance to observe, in real time, how a close planetary encounter affects an asteroid. <\/p>\n The asteroid Bennu itself is a relic of the early solar system. We now know, from those OSIRIS-REX samples, that Bennu is a rubble-pile asteroid rich in carbon and water-bearing minerals, offering clues to the chemistry that may have helped seed life on Earth. <\/p>\n Apophis offers something different \u2013 a live experiment. When OSIRIS-REX released its sample capsule into the Utah desert in September 2023, its mission might have seemed complete. But the spacecraft did not stop. Its trajectory had already been recalculated, its purpose extended. Renamed OSIRIS-APEX, it is now on course to meet Apophis, not by chance, but by design. Because in astronomy, alignment is everything. <\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/QORDQ6DR4UZLMHHHMEBGISWI2Q.jpg\")
The Osiris-Rex sample collector used for the seven-year journey to the asteroid Bennu. Photograph: Erika Blumenfeld\/Joseph Aebersold\/Nasa\/The New York Times <\/p>\n![\"Artist's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/RHB7KPFPNCDIMXTMPY2U65IZGY.jpg\")
Artist’s impression of Nasa’s OSIRIS-REX spacecraft approaching the asteroid Bennu. Photograph: Nasa\/PA Wire <\/p>\n