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...

The orbital path of 2011 AG5 has been carefully analyzed in the past year, due to its 1-in-550 probability to pass, during the moderately close approach to the Earth that will take place in early...

ESA today inaugurated a new hub that will strengthen Europe's contribution to the global hunt for asteroids and other hazardous natural objects that may strike Earth. Near-Earth Objects, or NEOs,...

A new series of images from Gemini Observatory shows Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) heading toward an extremely close rendezvous with the Sun. The images have been takenbetween February and May 2013 and...

Although Gaia's primary mission goal is the precise measurement of star positions and not observing NEOs, nevertheless it is likely to produce a significant contribution to NEO detection. This is...

In a fruitful collaboration between ESA and a group of amateur astronomers, the first comet was discovered by the so-called TOTAS survey. The comet is called P/2014 C1 (TOTAS) and has an orbit...

A bright fireball occurred over The Netherlands on 21 September 2017 at 19:00 UTC (21:00 CEST). In addition to many individual sightings, it was also recorded by an all-sky camera dedicated to...

With a mandate from the UN, ESA and other space agencies from around the world are about to establish a high-level group to help coordinate global response should a threatening asteroid ever be...

The fly-by of 2020 HS7 asteroid

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...

August 2020 Newsletter

May 2020 Newsletter

Current NEO statistics During the last month the global numbered asteroid catalogue (including main belt asteroid) surpassed the threshold of half million objects. The number of known NEOs surpassed 17 000, thanks to more than 300 discoveries in a single month.

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.

In recent years, it has become increasingly common for ground-based surveys to discover small objects that seem to be in distant Earth-centred orbits. Most of them turn out to be man-made spacecraft or upper stages of spent rockets residing in Earth’s region.

2016 NA39 is a newly-discovered asteroid that for a few days in mid-July deserved attention. Because of its large size, around one kilometre, it became the highest rated object with possible impacts in the current century, scoring as high as Palermo Scale of —2.6.

March 2021 Newsletter

February 2023 Newsletter

During the month of September a news circulated on European media claiming that between 22 and 28 September the Earth would have been hit by meteorites and other cataclysmic events.

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