The fly-by of 2020 JJ asteroid

If you check our current risk list, you will notice that a significant number of objects in the top positions are extremely “old”, discovered in the first decade of the century.

The number of known near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) reached the round total of 20 000 this week. This family of asteroids whose orbit brings them close to Earth is steadily growing at a pace of roughly...

A potentially hazardous asteroid once found but then lost has been rediscovered and its orbit confirmed by a determined amateur astronomer working with ESA's space hazards programme. The...

After discussing what to do to ensure that an important NEO is adequately monitored (see "news archive"), we will now present a possible strategy to improve the orbit of old objects, that have not...

An object discovered on 3 October 2015, temporarily designated WT1190F by the observers, will enter the Earth's atmosphere on 13 November. It was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey...

The number of known near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) has just surpassed the threshold of 15000. That is a 50% increase over the number known in 2013, when we posted a similar news item on our portal for...

The word "precovery" has entered the astronomical jargon rather recently but it quickly grew in popularity among asteroid hunters. It refers to the finding of an archival observation of an object...

At approximately 09:30 UT on 14 April 2018 the Catalina Sky Survey, in Arizona, discovered a bright magnitude 15 object moving at a sky speed of 10" per minute, in the constellation Libra. ...

The importance of accurate star catalogues and image archives for Planetary Defence

The object produced a bright fireball over the Great Lakes area

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...

What can we learn from close approachers?

The end state for most near-Earth objects (NEOs) – asteroids and comets that may pose a hazard to the Earth's ecosystem – has for the past two decades thought to be a collision with the Sun. A new...