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...

Last update: 2024-08-02 14:00 UTC Exercise     Exercise    Exercise This document does not describe a real asteroid impact threat. The information here is fictional and provided only to support...

Warning: the NEO Toolkit is undergoing maintenance activities. Some functionalities might not work as expected.

Summary 2008 TC3 was the first object detected in space prior to impacting the Earth. Discovery occurred at 06:39 UTC on 7 October 2008 by the Catalina Sky Survey and the meteoroid entered the...

Summary 2018 LA was the third object to be detected before impacting the Earth. The meteoroid was discovered at 08:22 UTC on 2 June 2018 by the Mount Lemmon Survey and impacted the atmosphere over...

Summary 2014 AA was the second object to be detected before impacting the Earth. The meteoroid was discovered on 1 January 2014 by the Mount Lemmon Survey and impacted the atmosphere over the...

This table contains a list of NEAs with confirmed 100% Earth impact. The columns provide key parameters used in the assessment, including nominal impact time, absolute magnitude, and estimated size...

Providing orbital data through VO protocols.

The NEOCC is ESA's centre for observing and computing asteroid orbits and assessing their impact risk.

Close Approach Fact Sheet for asteroid 2024 YR4 (version 1.0)

Our search engine provides a comprehensive exploration of the entire asteroid database, offering a wide range of filtering options based on object group, risk class, orbital parameters,...

Summary 2019 MO was the fourth object to be detected before impacting the Earth. The meteoroid was discovered by ATLAS in Mauna Loa on 22 June 2019 and impacted the atmosphere over the Caribbean...

The ESA NEO Coordination Centre has released the May newsletter.

The ESA NEO Coordination Centre (NEOCC) is the operational centre of ESA’s Planetary Defence Office (PDO) within the Space Safety Programme (S2P). It is located at ESA's establishment ESRIN...

In a recent close-ish flyby, asteroid 2002 GT was studied in detail for the first time by a network of European astronomers. The observations were coordinated by ESA's asteroid centre in Italy, and...

ESA will host the International Academy of Astronautic's 4th Planetary Defence Conference (PDC 2015), entitled ‘Assessing Impact Risk & Managing Response', at the Agency's ESRIN establishment, near...

In the evening of 07 September 2014, the newly discovered asteroid 2014 RC will have a very close fly-by of just above 30000 km to our planet. The object is estimated to be between 10 and 30 m in...

The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT), of which the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) is a main partner, has successfully observed asteroid 2014 KC46 in one of the faintest...

On 18th November, ESRIN and the heart of ESA's NEO activities, the NEO Coordination Centre (NEOCC), welcomed an elaborate group of people involved in NEO activities in Europe. About 40 NEO...

For the third time in recent history of asteroid detection a NEO was detected a few hours before it entered the Earth atmosphere (the two previous cases were 2008 TC3 and 2014 AA). Asteroid 2018 LA...

Using a system developed under an ESA contract, the Greek NELIOTA project has begun to detect flashes of light caused by small pieces of rock striking the Moon's surface. NELIOTA is the first...

In February, a speeding asteroid slammed into our atmosphere and exploded high over Russia's Ural region (on the left- Asteroid trace over Chelyabinsk, Russia, on 15 February 2013), injuring...

Today the NEO Coordination Centre (NEOCC) celebrates its first year of activities. On 22 May 2013 the Centre was formally inaugurated at ESRIN by Thomas Reiter, ESA Director of Human Spaceflight...

The number of known Near-Earth Asteroids has just overcome 10,000 units! This result represents an important achievement if one thinks that over the one hundred years between 1898 (when the first...

If an asteroid were spotted headed towards Earth, what could humanity do about it? ESA's latest mission is part of a larger international effort to find out. This month marked the start of...

In the last SSA-NEO observing run on Tenerife, we have imaged an object on the NEO Confirmation Page called SW40nU (now called comet C/2012 T5), discovered by the Spacewatch survey. It turned out...

The recent claim that asteroid 2014 UR116 may be threatening the Earth shows how difficult it is to convey the right message about the NEO hazard. The no-news spread after statements from the...