SALT LAKE CITY—NASA’s budget cuts may force the space agency to miss the chance to study the asteroid Apophis when it makes a close fly-by of Earth—but academia isn’t giving up on the opportunity.
A team from the University of Maryland is designing the Terrapin Engineered Rideshare Probe for Rapid-response Asteroid Apophis, Profiling, Tracking, Observing, and Reconnaissance mission—better known as TERP RAPTOR, a nod to the university’s terrapin mascot.
The cubesat would fly by the asteroid when Apophis passes within 32,000 km of Earth on April 13, 2029, studying the space rock for science and planetary defense purposes. (Incidentally, no need to worry about a collision anytime in the next century.)
“It’s almost like a day at the zoo when you’re looking at the tiger or the bear through the glass,” Adrienne Rudolph, the TERP RAPTOR lead, told Payload. “It can’t hurt you, but it’s right there and it’s worth seeing.”
On the sidelines: After NASA’s OSIRIS-REx collected a sample of the asteroid Bennu and returned it to Earth in 2023, the space agency redirected that spacecraft to check out Apophis, renaming the mission OSIRIS-APEX.
The Trump administration’s proposed fiscal 2026 budget would eliminate the OSIRIS-APEX mission. House and Senate appropriators have approved $20M for the program, but with the fate of the budget uncertain, the mission is a question mark.
That leaves academia with perhaps the best chance of launching a dedicated mission when nature delivers an asteroid on Earth’s doorstep, according to Brent Barbee, a mission team member and an aerospace engineering program lecturer at the University of Maryland.
“There’s not enough time in a traditional development schedule to do a full-up mission. There’s no Congressional direction, so there’s no money,” he said. “The cubesat, done by the university at a low enough price point that it could potentially be funded through sponsors, is…probably the only thing that could realistically be pulled together in time.”
Bottom line: The UMD team is working on derisking their design, but still faces several challenges to getting the cubesat on orbit, including raising the estimated $10M needed, Rudolph said. The cubesat also needs a ride to orbit, but has the flexibility to launch any time between October 2028 and March 2029.
Time is ticking: Barbee urged Congress to hold a hearing on Apophis, saying that if lawmakers knew the valuable science and planetary protection that could be missed, they might appropriate some money to support efforts like TERP RAPTOR—or open university competitions.
“The media frenzy over this is going to kick into high gear a few months before the event, when it’s way too late to do anything about it,” Barbee said. “There’s a window of opportunity now to do something.”
