The European Union (EU) and ESA’s Planetary Defence Office are organising the “EU-ESA Workshop on NEO Imminent Impactors Warning Coordination”. The workshop will take place at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany between 12-14 December 2022 and it will be performed in hybrid mode, with a preference for the local attendance of the speakers.

This workshop will explore the possibilities of increasing the networking of parties involved in the process of discovering, acknowledging and following up NEO imminent impactors as well as their atmospheric entry. Building on the recent occurrence of the impact of 2022 EB5 on 11 March 2022, EU and ESA want to increase the level of coordination and cooperation between all those actors. This includes asteroid discoverers and observers, NEOCP object analysts, spacecraft operators and mission planners and fireball network operators. Goals of the workshop are to establish a network of related experts and a communication protocol to ensure that the relevant information about imminent impactors reaches all possible interested parties.

A link to the event web portal can be found here.

The workshop sessions are the following:

1. New developments and updates to imminent impactor services
2. Observatories and observation networks for imminent impactors
3. Imminent impactor observation opportunities by spacecraft
4. Fireball networks and other sensing capabilities

Workshop presentations have been organised by invitation of relevant speakers. Speakers and interested participants are invited to register to the event up to 15 November 2022. Ample slots have been allocated in the programme to allow discussions between the experts. A limited number of presentation slots are still available. If a workshop attendee considers having a relevant contribution in the subject and would like to present it at the workshop, please send a message to the organisers with a proposed title and abstract before 30 October 2022. A limited capacity of up to 60 people will be available for local attendance to the event. These will be available to the speakers wanting to attend in person and on a first come first serve to the rest of attendees.

Programme of the European Union, implemented by ESA.