Revisiting Apophis 2029 approach to Earth (staying on shoulders of NASA experts) or Can we be sure in almost ricocheting fly-by of Apophis on 13 of April 2029 near the Earth?

TL;DR

This paper reevaluates Earth's orbit and the potential impact of Milankovich cycles on the predicted close approach of asteroid Apophis in April 2029, questioning the certainty of NASA's current trajectory calculations.

Contribution

It introduces an alternative analysis considering Milankovich cycles' influence on Earth's orbit, highlighting possible deviations from NASA's predictions.

Findings

Earth's orbit perturbation could be around 43,200 km due to Milankovich cycles.

NASA's current models may underestimate Earth's positional uncertainty during Apophis fly-by.

Potential deviation could affect impact risk assessments for the 2029 encounter.

Abstract

The main idea of this challenging research is to revisit the solar-centric dynamics of Earth around the Sun in analysis of its position on 13 April 2029 close to asteroid Apophis which is supposed to be moving in fly-by near the Earth on its orbit. As of now, we can be sure that trajectory of Apophis is well-known with respect to the center of Sun. Also, NASA experts calculated that relative distance between center of Earth and Apophis should be less than 38 thousands of kilometers during closest Apophis approach to the Earth. But the reasonable question is: will the center of Earth be at the predicted position at the beginning of April 2029? The matter is that NASA solving procedure disregards influence of Milankovich cycles to the orbit of Earth but alternative concept suggests another solution (with additional quasi-periodic deviation from their solution, proportional to square of eccentricity of Earth orbit around the Sun equals to ~ 0.017). So, possible perturbation of Earth orbit is likely to be proportional to (0.017)$^2$ ~ 0.03% from 1 a.e. or ~ 43 200 km which could be compared with gap between Earth and Apophis during closest Apophis approach to Earth in April 2029.