SHAO Solar System Seminar-Asteroid Apophis' close Earth encounter

Time: 09/09/2026 (Wednesday) 14:00
Location: Large conference room 3rd floor (#Tencent Meeting: 737-3346-2257)
Title: Probing the Interior of Apophis During Its 2029 Earth Flyby
Abstract: Apophis’s exceptionally close Earth encounter in 2029 will provide a rare opportunity to probe its interior through flyby-induced rotational changes. This talk presents a covariance-analysis framework that uses radar and optical attitude observations to estimate Apophis’s normalized moments of inertia and the offset between its center of mass and center of figure. Earth’s gravitational torque during the flyby makes these otherwise weakly observable parameters measurable. The results show that combined radar and optical observations can substantially improve estimation accuracy and provide a practical means to detect large-scale mass redistribution, thereby constraining Apophis’s internal structure.
Intro: My name is Hai-Shuo Wang. I am currently the NASA FINESST Fellow and a PhD candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder. My research focuses on the dynamics, evolution, and spacecraft exploration of small bodies, particularly binary asteroids and (99942) Apophis.