NEO Information Centres NEODyS - The Near-Earth Object Dynamic Site https://newton.spacedys.com/neodys/ AstDyS - The Asteroids Dynamic Site https://newton.spacedys.com/astdys/ The Minor Planet...

Additional information

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...

The Schmidt telescope of the Centro Astronómico Hispano en Andalucía (CAHA Schmidt) was first installed in 1955 at the Hamburg Observatory in Germany, and subsequently moved to the Calar Alto...

An interesting connection between Earth Observation and NEO monitoring activities has been unveiled through the NEO Coordination Centre participation at the "Big Data From Space" meeting, held at...

ESA and national disaster response offices recently rehearsed how to react if a threatening space rock is ever discovered to be on a collision course with Earth. Last month, experts from ESA's...

ESA’s expanding observational network forms the first pillar of its programme for planetary defence. Thanks to a number of telescopes either directly owned, funded or in scientific agreement with...

Near-Earth Object Population Observation Program (NEOPOP) During activities related to ESA's Space-Situational Awareness (SSA) programme, the need for an observation system simulation software tool...

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...

Directly the PDO manager Richard Moissl Head of the Planetary Defence Office Space Safety Programme ESA/ESRIN, Frascati, Italy richard.moissl[@]esa.int  

  The Image Archive search form allows to explore and find images collected during dedicated observation campaigns. The search filter is based on:   Observatory. IAU code and name of the...

  The table in this page contains information about objects that were in the Risk List and were subsequently removed, because no virtual impactors within the next 100 years were found after a given...

  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,...

  The observation priority list is computed as described in the reference provided in the description paragraphs in the associated web page. The variables provided in the table are the following:  ...

  The tables are accessible from the menu by the Fireballs section and the Observations section. In each section a list of all fireballs or observations present in the database are displayed.  ...

  Orbit Properties This page contains information about orbital properties of the object, as computed by the Aegis Orbit Determination and Impact Monitoring system. Orbital elements at a refence...

  The first table includes all objects for which a non-zero impact probability has been computed, considering only impacts in the next 100 years. The second table, called Special Risk List,...

  These tables contain close approaches of NEAs with the Earth within 0.05 au foreseen in the next year (Upcoming close approached to Earth), or that happened in the past 30 days (Recent close...

  This table contains a list of NEAs that impacted Earth and were detected prior to their entry in the Earth’s atmosphere. This table can also be also automatically downloaded through HTTPS APIs,...

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...

The "API support" for the NEOCC web services is currently limited to some HTTPS GET requests with raw text-based responses. Note that the API is considered as experimental — pending funding...

Close approach fact sheet for asteroid 2018WV1. A small asteroid impacted the Earth on 02 December 2018

The asteroid ground track displayed below represents the movement of the sub-asteroid point over the Earth, from the time of the first observation to its approach to the Southern part of Africa, just before its impact.

Close approach fact sheet for asteroid 2010WC9. A small asteroid impacted the Earth on 15 May 2018.

The asteroid ground track is provided below starting one day before the closest approach and extending for 1.5 days. The curve represents the movement of the sub-asteroid point over the Earth along the mentioned time interval. The track starts in the Pacific ocean at magnitude 16 and progresses westwards.

A small size asteroid will approach the Earth on 12 October 2017. The expected minimum distance is just above the geostationary ring, thus being a good target for radar observations.

Close approach fact sheet for asteroid (3122) Florence. The fly-by is not very close to the Earth, but the object is large in size.

On 22 June 2019, around 21:26 UT (17:26 local time), a roughly 5-metre object entered the atmosphere over the Caribbean Sea, and exploded at an altitude of about 25 km over the sea surface, releasing an energy roughly equivalent to 3 kt of TNT. The explosion was first detected by the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) instrument on board the GOES-16 geostationary satellite.

May will likely be the last month before summer with an average rate of NEO discoveries. Starting in June, most surveys in the South-West of the United States will likely temporarily decrease their productivity due to the summer monsoon season.

The number of known NEAs reached the round total of 20 000 at the end oflast month. This group of asteroids is steadily growing at a pace of roughly 160 new discoveries each month, thanks to the work done by the main asteroid surveys.

The first edition of the Planetary Defense Conference (PDC) managed by the International Academy of Astronautics happened exactly 10 years ago,in the week of 27-30 April 2009 (before the IAA became involved, there were two other PDCs, both in the USA). The conference was held in Granada, Spain, and was the first of a biennial IAA series that is continuing this month, with the 6th conference being held in College Park, USA.

On 1 February 2019 a bright daytime fireball was seen by multiple eyewitnesses around the area of Gulf of Mexico. It exploded over the western tip of Cuba, producing a significant shockwave felt by local residents, and the fall of a large number of stony meteorites, mostly near the village of Viflales.

This year on 8 February marks the 50th anniversary of the fall of the Allende meteorite, the largest carbonaceous chondrite ever found. The atmospheric entry and impact happened at night local time, and were therefore well observed over the entire Northern Mexico. About 2 tonnes of fragments were later collected on ground in a strewn field of about 50 km size.

For the first time since 2012 the year that just ended did not break all records of annual NEO discoveries. This was mostly due to unusually poor weather in Hawaii, where many current NEO discovery surveys are located.

The month of December this year marks the fifth anniversary of the launch of ESA’s Gaia spacecraft. The mission, now operating continuously near the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrangian point, has already revolutionized many fields of astronomy, thanks to the broad and exquisite quality of the data it is producing.

On 19 October a very small asteroid, designated as 2018 UA, was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey, and quickly flagged as a potential very close approacher. Immediate follow-up observations by both Catalina and the Spacewatch project led to a much more accurate orbit solution.

Ten years ago, on 6 October 2008,Richard Kowalski, an observer of the Catalina Sky Survey, spotted the first-ever asteroid found on an imminent collision course with the Earth. Over the following hours, hundreds of astrometric observations, plus light curves and spectroscopic data, were collected by observers all over the world.

The Fly-Eye Telescope is an innovative project of ESA‘s SSA-NEO Segment that will focus on survey and follow-up of NEOs. Another important milestone on the way to build the telescope was achieved: from 30 July to 1 August ESA attended the acceptance test of the equatorial mount at its production site in Verona, Italy.

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