News > Notorious asteroid ‘Apophis’ used to test planetary defense system
Notorious asteroid ‘Apophis’ used to test planetary defense system
07/06/2022 12:42 PM | Click to read full article
To test the operational readiness of planetary defense systems, researchers sometimes use a real asteroid’s close approach as a mock encounter with a new potentially hazardous asteroid.
The lessons learned from these mock exercises could help limit or even prevent global devastation if such a situation actually arises in the future. Scientists used the infamous asteroid 99942 Apophis for this purpose.
