QUOTE (jasedm @ Dec 7 2023, 11:59 AM)
Really excited about this mission - it's a triumph of re-purposing a perfectly functional spacecraft for other duties.
As I understand it, there are some significant uncertainties as to exactly where Apophis may be after closest approach to Earth, I guess there's enough fuel on board to account for these?
Can't be that uncertain given the error bars for subsequent close approaches to Earth?
In any event, Osiris is chasing Apophis as it flies by Earth, AFAICT, so right after Apophis chooses a course, Osiris sets one... both in Earth's gravity well. It's not a deep space rendezvous where the TCM at earth has to set them both on a path to rendezvous months later for a flyby on orthogonal paths or any such thing.