After discussing what to do to ensure that an important NEO is adequately monitored (see "news archive"), we will now present a possible strategy to improve the orbit of old objects, that have not...

The observational component of NEO science is an extremely important part of the impact mitigation effort, since observations are the input data for all the computational models used to predict...

The ESA Optical Ground Station has quickly become a major asset for the NEO Coordination Centre, thanks to the many nights devoted to observing asteroids. It is located at an altitude of 2400 m on...

Spotting Earth-threatening asteroids is tough partly because the sky is so big. But insects offer an answer, since they figured out long ago how to look in many directions at once.

Each year, astronomers worldwide discover over 1000 new asteroids or other space rocks that could strike our planet. And if one is spotted heading towards Earth, experts working in ESA and national...

One of the major goals of the ESA NEO Coordination Centre is to focus observations on objects with non-zero impact probabilities. When an asteroid quickly becomes very faint just after discovery...

An object discovered on 3 October 2015, temporarily designated WT1190F by the observers, will enter the Earth's atmosphere on 13 November. It was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey...

​​​​​​The impact of WT1190F in the Indian Ocean on 13 November (see our news item on 22 October) provided an excellent opportunity to simulate the observational sequence that needs to be triggered...