The number of known near-Earth asteroids has just surpassed the threshold of 15000. That is a 50% increase with respect to 2013, when the 10000th object was found, highlighting the ever increasing success of ground-based NEO detection surveys.

Whenever a new set of observations for an object is published, our Impact Monitoring routines perform a new search for possibly impacting orbits compatible with such set of observations. The system is capable of detecting all possibly impacting orbits down to an impact probability threshold, named “generic completeness level”.

During 2015-2016 ESA funded the development of two small robotic observatories, called the Test-Bed Telescopes (TBTs). The main goal is to develop and test a fully automated telescope control system to observe NEOs and space debris.

Every month about 40 known or recently discovered asteroids come within 0.05 astronomical units, or about 19 lunar radii, from our planet. In some cases, such as in the month of December 2016,four or even five objects reach their closest approach distance on the same day.