( Via The Guardian ) British space engineers will unveil designs today for a satellite that would rendezvous with and track Apophis, an asteroid that is on a potential collision course with Earth. Apophis will have a close encounter with the Earth in 2029 and could hit us when it swings by again in 2036.
Nasa has estimated that, if the asteroid hit the Earth, it would release more than 100,000 times the energy released in the nuclear blast over Hiroshima. Thousands of square kilometres would be directly affected by the blast but the whole of the Earth would see the effects of the dust released into the atmosphere.
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