On April 13, 2029, a 340-meter asteroid named Apophis will thread the needle between Earth and its geostationary satellites, passing just 32,000 kilometers from the surface — closer than the communications satellites that relay your television signal. It will be visible to the naked eye across parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia, and for planetary scientists, it represents a once-in-a-millennium opportunity to study how Earth's gravity warps, stresses, and reshapes a space rock in real time.
Now a team of more than 20 undergraduate students at Tsinghua University in Beijing intends to be there when it happens. Their mission, called START — Student-led Threatening Asteroid Reconnaissance of Tsinghua — aims to fly a 200-kilogram spacecraft within seven kilometers of Apophis during the close encounter, resolving individual boulders on the asteroid's surface and tracking how tidal stress from Earth's gravitational pull reshapes it.
The budget? Approximately $2.8 million. The team delivering the spacecraft prototype? September 2026. The launch window? Early 2028, hitching a ride aboard a Zhuque-3 rocket.
An Asteroid on Our Doorstep
Apophis has been one of planetary defense's most scrutinized objects since its discovery in 2004, when initial observations briefly gave it a 2.7 percent chance of striking Earth in 2029 — the highest impact probability ever assigned to an asteroid of its size. Subsequent tracking eliminated the threat, but the flyby itself remains extraordinary. At 32,000 kilometers, Apophis will pass closer than geostationary orbit, the ring at roughly 36,000 kilometers altitude where telecom and weather satellites park.
"This is a 'doorstep' deep space target," chief scientist Bin Cheng told SpaceNews, emphasizing that the approach eliminates the need for multi-year interplanetary travel. That accessibility is what makes START possible as a university-led effort rather than a flagship agency mission.
The spacecraft will carry narrow and wide-field cameras alongside dual visible-to-near-infrared hyperspectral imagers, achieving a peak resolution of eight centimeters per pixel. At that granularity, individual boulders come into focus — and more importantly, scientists can compare surface features before and after the tidal encounter to see whether Earth's gravity triggered landslides, fractures, or structural shifts on the asteroid.
Getting There on a Student Budget
The mission's price tag invites skepticism, but START's economics lean heavily on in-kind contributions. The launch rideshare aboard the Zhuque-3 — a methane-fueled rocket developed by the Chinese commercial launch company LandSpace — comes at no cost to the project. Electric propulsion hardware and camera components are also being provided through partnerships, keeping the cash budget focused on integration, testing, and operations.
After separating from the rocket at roughly 1,000 kilometers altitude in a 55-degree inclination orbit, START will fire its xenon solar electric propulsion system to slowly raise its orbit over approximately 200 days, climbing to 31,600 kilometers — just below the altitude where Apophis will pass. The relative velocity at encounter will be 8.74 kilometers per second, demanding precise timing and autonomous navigation to capture usable science during the flyby.
The project kicked off in April 2025. Prototype development is scheduled to begin in September 2026, with the finished spacecraft due by September 2027 — an aggressive timeline by any standard, let alone for a team anchored by undergraduates. Funding draws from university support, donations, and sponsorship.
A Crowded Field at Apophis
START will not be alone. The 2029 flyby has attracted a small fleet of international missions, each approaching the asteroid with different capabilities and timelines.
Japan's DESTINY+ is expected to conduct a flyby of Apophis in January 2029, arriving months before the closest approach to Earth. The European Space Agency's RAMSES mission — a dedicated rendezvous spacecraft — plans to observe Apophis from February through August 2029, bracketing the tidal encounter with months of before-and-after data. And NASA's OSIRIS-APEX (formerly OSIRIS-REx, the spacecraft that returned samples of asteroid Bennu in 2023) is being redirected to rendezvous with Apophis in April 2029 for an 18-month observation campaign.
That means at least four spacecraft from four space agencies could be studying the same 340-meter rock in the same year — an unprecedented convergence in planetary science. Each mission carries different instruments, operates at different distances, and captures different phases of the encounter, making the combined dataset far richer than any single mission could achieve.
START's contribution sits at the high-resolution end of the spectrum. Its eight-centimeter-per-pixel imaging at just seven kilometers' distance should complement the broader surveys conducted by RAMSES and OSIRIS-APEX from greater standoff distances.
China's Broader Asteroid Ambitions
START is not emerging in a vacuum. China has been steadily building its small-body science portfolio. Several other Chinese concepts for Apophis missions have been proposed in recent years, including a cubesat swarm mission and a flyby concept called CROWN. More concretely, China is planning an asteroid deflection test for around 2027, involving both an impactor and an observer spacecraft — a mission profile loosely analogous to NASA's DART experiment, which successfully altered the orbit of the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos in 2022.
Meanwhile, the Tianwen-2 spacecraft is currently en route to the near-Earth object Kamo'oalewa, with arrival expected in early July. That mission will attempt to collect samples from one of the smallest asteroids ever targeted for sample return, further establishing China's credentials in small-body exploration.
The broader context is a global surge in asteroid science. NASA's Lucy mission, which conducted a flyby of main-belt asteroid Donaldjohanson in April 2025 — revealing a wobbling, peanut-shaped body with evidence of ancient liquid water — is continuing toward its primary targets in the Trojan asteroid swarms, with its first Trojan flyby of Eurybates scheduled for August 2027. Sample return missions, deflection tests, and flyby campaigns are collectively giving planetary scientists more data on asteroids than any previous decade.
Why It Matters
Apophis's 2029 flyby is not just a scientific opportunity — it is a stress test for humanity's ability to characterize a potentially hazardous asteroid up close. Everything we learn about how Apophis responds to Earth's tidal forces, from surface cracking to orbital perturbation, feeds directly into planetary defense models that would guide future deflection attempts if a genuine threat were identified.
START's significance extends beyond its science return. A $2.8 million university-led mission reaching an asteroid would demonstrate that deep-space exploration is no longer the exclusive domain of national space agencies with billion-dollar budgets. If 20 undergraduates at Tsinghua can deliver a spacecraft to within seven kilometers of a near-Earth asteroid, the barrier to entry for small-body science drops substantially — opening the door for other universities and small organizations to contribute meaningfully to planetary defense.
The mission also tests a practical model for rapid, low-cost deep-space access: solar electric propulsion from low Earth orbit, commercial rideshare launches, and in-kind hardware contributions replacing traditional procurement. If START works, it becomes a template. If it fails, the lessons learned at $2.8 million are far cheaper than those learned at $280 million.
Either way, April 2029 is shaping up to be the most intensively observed asteroid encounter in history. And one of the spacecraft in the fleet will have been built by students.
