ESA's Optical Ground Station (OGS) is a facility built by ESA to support tests of optical communication between Earth and orbiting satellites. The instrument is routinely used by ESA's Space Safety...

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Summary 2022 WJ1 was the sixth impactor discovered while still outside Earth's atmosphere. Found by the Mt. Lemmon station of the Catalina Sky Survey, it impacted Earth near the Great Lakes region...

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2024 YR4 has scored the highest Torino Scale in the last 20 years

Summary 2022 EB5 was the fifth object to be detected before impacting the Earth. The meteoroid was discovered at Konkoly Observatory (Hungary) on 11 March 2022 and impacted the atmosphere over the...

Summary 2024 UQ is the tenth imminent impactor observed in space before hitting the Earth. It was first observed by ATLAS, but reported after the impact had already happened. It was subsequently...

Albedo The ratio of reflected sunlight to incident sunlight. Given an albedo and the distance of the asteroid from the Sun and the observer, the size of an object can be estimated from its...

Introduction The European Space Agency (herein the “Agency” or “ESA”) is an intergovernmental organisation established by its Convention opened for signature in Paris on 30 May 1975 having its...