Context

• Apophis, a near-Earth asteroid, and the most hazardous will fly by the Earth on April 13, 2029, and again in 2036. 

Key Highlights

• Apophis has a diameter of 370 metres.
• The impact of an asteroid 10 km or bigger is regarded as an extinction-scale event.
• ISRO is also keen to join the Space agencies worldwide working towards building planetary defence capabilities.

International missions related to asteroid monitoring and exploration

• NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission: It was the first planetary defence experiment; DART collided with asteroid Dimorphos on September 26, 2022.
• Hayabusa2 Asteroid Mission: An asteroid sample-return mission operated by the Japanese space agency JAXA. It was sent in 2014 to collect samples of the asteroid Ryugu.
• Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM): It is a European Space Agency (ESA) mission to study the 'Didymos binary asteroid system'.

Asteroids

• Asteroids are small rocky bodies that orbit the Sun. Asteroids orbit the Sun just like planets, but are much smaller than planets in size.
• The asteroid belt is located in the region between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

World Asteroid Day: June 30