Apophis encounters with meteoroid streams of listed comets

Investigate whether asteroid 99942 Apophis will encounter material in the meteoroid streams associated with comets C/1882 F1 (Wells), C/1917 F1 (Mellish), C/1917 H1 (Schaumasse), C/1961 T1 (Seki), C/1990 N1 (Tsuchiya-Kiuchi), C/2015 P3 (SWAN), and C/2021 P4 (ATLAS).

Background

The study evaluates close-encounter circumstances between asteroid 99942 Apophis and catalogued small bodies through 2029, primarily focusing on direct orbital intersections and timing offsets. Comets in the analyzed subsample are currently far from the inner Solar System, ruling out direct collisions with Apophis.

Comets are identified as the most likely bodies to carry substantial material along their orbits in meteoroid streams. Although Comet Mellish has known associated meteoroid activity, the authors explicitly state that the possibility of Apophis encountering material in the meteoroid streams of the listed comets was not examined in detail and is deferred to future work.

References

This work has not examined the possibility of Apophis encountering material in the meteoroid stream of these comets in detail; this possibility remains to be looked at in future work.

— Encounter circumstances of asteroid 99942 Apophis with the catalogue of known asteroids  (2403.00541 - Wiegert et al., 2024) in Subsubsection 'Comets', Section 'Other cases of note' (Results and discussion)