In the month of December, (29075) 1950 DA, an old NEA, entered the risk list in a peculiar way: the addition is not based on new observations but it is the combined result of an already existing good observational coverage for this object, together with a newly implemented dynamical model now available at NEODYS.

The newly discovered asteroid (469219) 2016 HO3 has been attracting the interest of the NEO community becauseof its peculiar orbital path. Having the same period of revolution of the Earth but a higher eccentricity and being properly phased, this object appears to circle our planet in a retrograde “quasi-satellite” orbit with period one year.

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.

Just a few days before the edition of the present newsletter a large bolide crossed the Italian northern sky. The event was observed by many people and in particular by a newly installed fireball network PRISMA (see next page). Such images have been used to determine the trajectory of the entering object.

May 2022 Newsletter

This month, while reading this newsletter, you will find an object designated with a “non-standard” name: XDg2F93. Labels like this, not following the standard form of year + letters + numbers,are called “temporary designations”.

February 2023 Newsletter

January 2024 Newsletter

September 2023 Newsletter

October 2023 Newsletter

June 2023 Newsletter

June 2024 Newsletter

October 2022 Newsletter

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

January 2022 Newsletter

November 2021 Newsletter

On 10 February 1896 at 09:30 a large fireball appeared in the sky over the Spanish capital, Madrid. The bolide exploded at high-altitude and an air-burst was reported by many observers. Slightly more than one minute after the explosion the shock wave reached the city, causing quite some fear among the population.

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.

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.

July 2022 Newsletter

December 2022 Newsletter

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.

August 2021 Newsletter

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.

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.

November 2023 Newsletter

February 2022 Newsletter

August 2022 Newsletter

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.

The NEO Coordination Centre web portal is an evolving environment: new services are added whenever ready to be made publicly available. This is the case for two software packages addressing key issues in NEO science: an updated NEO population model and an NEO propagator.

November was a month of close approaches of many small objects. A particularly interesting case was 2015 VY105, which came to less than 30 000 km from the Earth’s surface on 15 November.

Two large objects have been observed in the month ofJuly. (85989) 1999 JD6 had a distant encounter with the Earth, while the newly discovered asteroid 2015 OL35 entered our priority list for follow-up observations.

August 2024 Newsletter

May 2023 Newsletter

During the past year ESA funded the refurbishment and modernization of the 0.8 m Schmidt reflector located at the Calar Alto Observatory in Spain. The telescope, identified with the MPC code Z84,is now operational and can be remotely controlled.

Close Approach Fact Sheet for asteroid 2024 YR4 (version 1.0)

Asteroid 7482 1994PC1

April 2022 Newsletter