The closest non-impacting asteroid

The fly-by of 2020 QG asteroid

A new paper by Alessio Del Vigna and collaborators, published this week in the Astronomy and Astrophysics journal, significantly revised the chances of impact of (410777) 2009 FD.

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.

A few months ago a long thin tail was noticed on main belt asteroid (6478) Gault. An international collaboration led by scientists of the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Hawaii...

During the last observing run with the ESA 1-m telesope on Tenerife (the OGS = Optical Ground Station) the SSA-NEO programme successfully recovered three 'lost' NEOs. In addition, one new NEO was...

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.

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...

​​​​​​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...

As part of an international observing campaign, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has been imaged during our normal monthly observing run on 16 September with the OGS telescope in Tenerife. In the attached...

Detecting an asteroid beyond telescope normal operation

NEO techniques applied to optical tracking of satellites