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...

ESA's Optical Ground Station (OGS) is a facility built by ESA to support tests of optical communication between Earth and orbiting satellites. The instrument is routinely used by ESA's Space Safety...

latest news

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Summary 2022 WJ1 was the sixth impactor discovered while still outside Earth's atmosphere. Found by the Mt. Lemmon station of the Catalina Sky Survey, it impacted Earth near the Great Lakes region...

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2024 YR4 has scored the highest Torino Scale in the last 20 years

Summary 2022 EB5 was the fifth object to be detected before impacting the Earth. The meteoroid was discovered at Konkoly Observatory (Hungary) on 11 March 2022 and impacted the atmosphere over the...

Summary 2024 UQ is the tenth imminent impactor observed in space before hitting the Earth. It was first observed by ATLAS, but reported after the impact had already happened. It was subsequently...

Albedo The ratio of reflected sunlight to incident sunlight. Given an albedo and the distance of the asteroid from the Sun and the observer, the size of an object can be estimated from its...

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...