June 2023 Newsletter

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Close Approach Fact Sheet for asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2

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

Introduction The European Space Agency (herein the “Agency” or “ESA”) is an intergovernmental organisation established by its Convention opened for signature in Paris on 30 May 1975 having its...

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Last update: 2020-12-04 10:00 UTC On this page, the NEOCC provides problems (we call them 'riddles') related to the observation of NEOs, their dynamics and their characterisation. In irregular...

It is possible to visualise the orbits of all asteroids in our database by entering their name, provisional designation or catalogue number. The position along the orbit is computed at regular time...

Asteroid and Comet Trajectory Propagator (NEOPROP) In 2012, Astos Solutions developed for ESA a new orbital propagator algorithm in order to assess the potential risk of impact of an NEO. The...

The first part of the Discovery Statistics page

It is widely acknowledged that NEO science is intriguing and often goes against common sense. A clear understanding of the meaning and importance of any text concerning near-Earth objects, their...

The word NEO stands for near-Earth object, indicating a small body of the Solar System which can come into the Earth’s neighbourhood. A broad classification of NEOs distinguishes NECs (near-Earth...

Even if an asteroid misses the Earth, it can come back and hit our planet in a subsequent "return". Whether this happens or not, depends on whether the object passes through well-defined regions in...

The first NEA, (433) Eros, was discovered by Gustav Witt from the Urania Sternwarte Berlin and independently by Auguste Charlois from the Observatoire de Nice, on 13 August 1898. The discovery...

SSA is the acronym of ESA's "Space Situational Awareness" programme, which was the precursor to the current Space Safety Programme. SSA ran between 2009 and 2019. More info at:...

The Torino scale is a function of the impact energy and probability of the event, with no reference to the time of impact. In the Palermo scale, the risk posed by a possible impactor is compared to...

S2P is the acronym for ESA's "Space Safety Programme”. Its aim is "the protection of our planet, humanity and assets in space and on Earth from dangers originating in space". More info at:...

PDO is the acronym of ESA’s Planetary Defence Office within its Space Safety programme (S2P). The goals of the Office are to: 1) be aware of the current and future position of near-Earth objects...

The possibility of browsing through the largest possible set of astronomical images and download them for inspection is extremely useful in order to find possible unidentified detections of NEOs or...