The observational component of NEO science is an extremely important part of the impact mitigation effort, since observations are the input data for all the computational models used to predict...

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...

Asteroid 2016 RB1 has hit the news because of a peculiar close passage on 7 September 2016 at 19:20 CEST. About the size of a cottage, the asteroid flew past our planet at an altitude of 34000 km,...

Planetary Defence office we took the opportunity of the Solar Orbiter launch to perform an observational exercise, attempting to image the departing spacecraft with a ground based optical telescope.

A little-known asteroid will skim past Earth on 15 February, passing just 28 000 km from our planet. The 50 m-diameter chunk of space rock was discovered last year by ESA-sponsored amateur...

The first recovery campaign carried out by the ESA NEO Coordination Centre in coordination with ESO, using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) (VLT telescopes on the Paranal mountain in Chile (credit:...

The fly-by of 2020 JJ asteroid

The Planetary Defence community has detected the fifth asteroid impactor

Each year, astronomers worldwide discover over 1000 new asteroids or other space rocks that could strike our planet. And if one is spotted heading towards Earth, experts working in ESA and national...

NEO Coordination Centre's observing campaign to track the fly-by of BepiColombo

​​​​​​The impact of WT1190F in the Indian Ocean on 13 November (see our news item on 22 October) provided an excellent opportunity to simulate the observational sequence that needs to be triggered...

Registration is open for the ESA NEO and Debris Detection Conference - Exploiting Synergies, which will be held at ESA/ESOC, Darmstadt, Germany, 22 - 24 January 2019. The deadline for the...

An international campaign has revealed that an asteroid will come within 44 000 km of our planet in October, providing a rare opportunity for intensive studies. Astronomers recently spotted...

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...

ExoMars, the ESA/Russia mission en route toward the Red Planet, has turned into a remarkable observing opportunity for asteroid hunters. The post launch outbound trajectory of the spacecraft...

The closest non-impacting asteroid

A few weeks ago the Pan-STARRS survey discovered a new NEO, temporarily identified as P10G8tt and then formally designated 2018 AM12. Follow-up observations over the next few days allowed the...

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

A team of European astronomers has found a previously unknown comet, detected as a tiny blob of light orbiting our Sun deep in the Solar System.

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. ...

First light of ESA's Test-Bed Telescope in Chile

Typical behaviour of a non-impacting object in the risk list

The ESA Optical Ground Station has quickly become a major asset for the NEO Coordination Centre, thanks to the many nights devoted to observing asteroids. It is located at an altitude of 2400 m on...

ESA’s Planetary Defence Office (PDO) has participated with several presentations at the 6th IAA Planetary Defense Conference held in College Park, near Washington, between 29 April and 3 May.

ESA has inaugurated the new building for the NEOCC at ESRIN

Last month, ESA's near-Earth asteroid coordination centre triggered a series of European observations that confirmed an unknown object was, in fact, of human origin. The confirmation was the...

NELIOTA is an activity initiated by the European Space Agency (ESA), which was recently launched at the National Observatory of Athens. The project aims to count and characterise the number and...

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...

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...

One of the major goals of the ESA NEO Coordination Centre is to focus observations on objects with non-zero impact probabilities. When an asteroid quickly becomes very faint just after discovery...

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...

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...

ESA’s Planetary Defence Office has just released a new NEOCC web portal

Every few hours observing the Moon, ESA’s ‘NELIOTA’ project discovers a brilliant flash of light across its surface – the result of an object hurtling through space and striking our unprotected...

NEOCC observations help in nailing down the orbit of 2021 PH27

Possible extension for the Hayabusa2 mission

While the sky becomes more and more continuously scanned by ground and space-based NEO surveys, discovering objects in unusual orbital configurations represents the new frontier. Their dynamics...

New observations of asteroid Apophis rule out any chance of impact for at least a century

Soon after having been spotted in the sky on 8 October 2013 from the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory (Ukraine), asteroid 2013TV135 topped the Risk Page. Being a relatively large object (500 m in...

The fly-by of 2020 QG asteroid

Detecting an asteroid beyond telescope normal operation

ESA's NELIOTA project detects the flash of light produced when an asteroid collides energetically with the lunar surface and recently recorded its 100th impact.

Spotting Earth-threatening asteroids is tough partly because the sky is so big. But insects offer an answer, since they figured out long ago how to look in many directions at once.

A newly-established collaboration between our team and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) led to the first-ever observation of an NEA with the 10.4 m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC). We...

If an asteroid is discovered which could come very close to Earth, it is important to coordinate observational activities quickly to better know its precise flyby distance.This is illustrated by...

The ESA SSA-NEO Coordination Centre has released the December newsletter.

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...

Summary 2024 RW1 was the ninth asteroid discovered to be on an impact trajectory with Earth while still in space. The object was found by the Catalina Sky Survey on the morning UT hours of 4...

Summary 2024 BX1 was the eighth object to be detected before impacting the Earth. The meteoroid was discovered at Piszkéstető Observatory (Hungary) on 20 January 2024 and impacted the atmosphere...

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, includes...

This is the page hosting links for the NEO Tools

Summary 2024 XA1 was the eleventh asteroid discovered on an impact trajectory, and the fourth one in 2024. It was found by the Catalina Sky Survey team observing from Kitt Peak, Arizona. It...

NEOCC has managed a network of observatories to observe the result of the interplanetary collision

Summary 2023 CX1 was the seventh object to be detected before impacting the Earth. The meteoroid was discovered at Konkoly Observatory (Hungary) on 12 February 2023 and impacted the atmosphere over...

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...

Planetary Defence involves a collaborative effort among various organizations, including the European Space Agency (ESA), NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the Center for Near Earth...

September 2021 Newsletter

Asteroid 2012 TC4, discovered five years ago by the Pan-STARRS survey,will come back close to Earth on 12 October 2077.It will fly-by at 44 000 km from the surface, providing a rare chance to carefully observe a small known object during its entire approach to our planet.

We took the opportunity of the ExoMars 2016 launch to organize a ground-based observational campaign. The goal was to test, in a reverse mode, the observational scenario needed to monitor the approach of a small Earth impactor. The spacecraft and other hardware related to the launch was successfully imaged;

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.