On 9 May the planet Mercury will transit the Sun as seen from Earth. Although not an asteroid event, this gives us a chance to talk about how transits have been used in the past to probe the population of small asteroids extremely close to the Sun (the so-called Vulcanoids).

The month of September was unusually rich of close approaches. Nine objects,all with a diameter of about 10 metres, flew by our planet closer than about the distance of the Moon.

On 27 June 2018, after a cruise phase of 3.5 years, the Japanese Hayabusa 2 spacecraft rendezvoused with its target, near-Earth asteroid (162173) Ryugu. The first images sent back by the mission's cameras show a nearly spherical object, much more symmetric