Related papers: Threats from space: 20 years of progress

To date, three samples from near-Earth asteroids have been delivered to Earth by Japan's Hayabusa (2010) and Hayabusa2 (2020) missions, and the United States OSIRIS-REx mission (2023). Free from terrestrial contamination, these pristine…

Since 1990, the United Nations is annually holding a workshop on basic space science for the benefit of the worldwide development of astronomy. Additional to the scientific benefits of the workshops and the strengthening of international…

Only a very small fraction of the asteroid population at size scales comparable to the object that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia has been discovered to date, and physical properties are poorly characterized. We present previously…

Asteroids with low orbital perihelion distances experience extreme heating from the Sun that can modify their surfaces and trigger non-typical activity mechanisms. These objects are generally difficult to observe from ground-based…

In this work, we analyzed the orbits of more than 35,000 (for 2024) near-Earth objects (NEOs) for the possibility of successive approaches to all pairs of planets: Earth, Venus, and Mars in the time range from 2020 to 2120. We have selected…

Using the Wide Field Camera for the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope, we measure the near-infrared colors of near-Earth objects (NEOs) in order to put constraints on their taxonomic classifications. The rapid-response character of our…

We estimate the total population of near-Earth objects (NEOs) in the Solar System, using an extensive, `Solar System to pixels' fake-asteroid simulation to debias detections of real NEOs by the ATLAS survey. Down to absolute magnitudes…

The orbital evolution of more than 22000 Jupiter-crossing objects under the gravitational influence of planets was investigated. We found that the mean collision probabilities of Jupiter-crossing objects (from initial orbits close to the…

Hazardous asteroid has been one of the concerns for humankind as fallen asteroid on earth could cost a huge impact on the society.Monitoring these objects could help predict future impact events, but such efforts are hindered by the large…

The rotational properties of small near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) provide crucial insights into their internal structure and collisional history. However, systematic surveys targeting metre- to decametre-sized bodies are rare, thus leaving…

We analytically and numerically investigate the possibility that a still undiscovered body X, moving along an unbound hyperbolic path from outside the solar system, may penetrate its inner regions in the next few years posing a threat to…

The Earth is impacted by 35-40 metre-scale objects every year. These meteoroids are the low mass end of impactors that can do damage on the ground. Despite this they are very poorly surveyed and characterised, too infrequent for ground…

We discuss a hypothetical existential threat from a 10 km diameter bolide discovered 6 months prior to impact with one case being a comet and the other being an asteroid. We show that an extension of our work on bolide fragmentation using…

In this paper we put forward a proposal to use Near Earth Objects as radiation shield for deep space exploration. In principle these objects can provide also a spacious habitat for the astronauts and their supplies on their journeys. We…

We perform high fidelity simulations of a wide-field telescopic survey searching for Near-Earth Objects (NEO) larger than 140\,m, focusing on the observational and detection model, detection efficiency and accuracy. As a test survey we…

The space environment around the Earth is populated by more than 130 million objects of 1 mm in size and larger, and future predictions shows that this amount is destined to increase, even if mitigation measures are implemented at a far…

Accurate measurements of osculating orbital elements are essential in order to understand and model the complex dynamic behavior of Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs). ESA's Gaia mission promises to have great potential in this respect. In this…

This article describes a citizen-science project conducted by the Spanish Virtual Observatory (SVO) to improve the orbits of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) using data from astronomical archives. The list of NEAs maintained at the Minor Planet…

Thermal infrared measurements of near-Earth objects provide critical data for constraining their physical properties such as size. The NEOWISE mission has been conducting an all-sky infrared survey to gather such data and improve our…

There is now solid experimental evidence of at least one supernova explosion within 100 pc of Earth within the last few million years, from measurements of the short-lived isotope 60Fe in widespread deep-ocean samples, as well as in the…