Apophis 99942, the Asteroid will be passing about 30K miles from Earth within the next 5 years. Here are some key dates: Apophis 99942 was discovered by Tucker, Tholen, and Bernardi at Kitt Peak National Observatory [19 Jun 2004] Apophis 99942 is on the Torino scale [27 Dec 2004 - 31 Aug 2006] -- Apophis set the record for the highest rating ever on the Torino scale, reaching level 4 on December 27, 2004. August 2006 when the probability that Apophis would pass through the keyhole was determined to be very small, Apophis's rating on the Torino scale was lowered to zero. Asteroid gets the number 99942 [24 Jun 2005] -- Once its orbit was sufficiently well calculated, it received the permanent number 99942 on June 24, 2005. Apophis is named after the Egyptian God of Chaos ( also known as Apep ) [19 Jul 2005] -- Receiving a permanent number made it eligible for naming by its discoverers, and they chose the name "Apophis" on July 19, 2005 Poss...