Related papers: Asteroid 2023 NT1: A Cautionary Tale
Mitigation of the threat from airbursting asteroids requires an understanding of the potential risk they pose for the ground. How asteroids release their kinetic energy in the atmosphere is not well understood due to the rarity of…
Near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) that may evolve into impactors deserve detailed threat assessment studies. Early physical characterization of a would-be impactor may help in optimizing impact mitigation plans. We first detected NEA…
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…
Near-Earth asteroid 2014 AA entered the Earth's atmosphere on 2014 January 2, only 21 hours after being discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey. In this paper we compute the trajectory of 2014 AA by combining the available optical astrometry,…
Close encounters of Near Earth Objects (NEOs) with large asteroids are a possible source of systematic errors in trajectory propagations and asteroid mitigation. It is, thus, necessary to identify those large asteroids that have to be…
Near Earth Objects (NEOs) are a transient population of small bodies with orbits near or in the terrestrial planet region. They represent a mid-stage in the dynamical cycle of asteroids and comets, which starts with their removal from the…
On 4 March 2021 at 9 UTC a 30-m in diameter near-Earth asteroid 2021 DW1 passed the Earth at a distance of 570000 km, reaching the maximum brightness of V=14.6 mag. We observed it photometrically from 2 March, when it was visible at V=16.5…
On 2013 February 15 a small asteroid rammed against the atmosphere above the region of Chelyabinsk in Russia, producing the most powerful superbolide since the Tunguska event in 1908. Lacking proper astrometric observations, the pre-impact…
On 2020 September 18 US Government sensors detected a bolide with peak bolometric magnitude of -19 over the western Pacific. The impact was also detected by the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) instrument on the GOES-17 satellite and…
Among the currently known Near Earth Objects (NEOs), roughly 1400 are classified as being potentially hazardous asteroids. The recent Chelyabinsk event has shown that these objects can pose a real threat to mankind. We illustrate that high…
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…
In recent years, nine small near-Earth asteroids were discovered a few hours before the collision with the Earth: these are about one meter in diameter objects that have all disintegrated in the atmosphere, generating bright fireballs…
The near-Earth asteroid (NEA) 2015 TB145 had a very close encounter with Earth at 1.3 lunar distances on October 31, 2015. We obtained 3-band mid-infrared observations with the ESO VLT-VISIR instrument and visual lightcurves during the…
It has been 20 years since planning began for the 1995 United Nations International Conference on Near-Earth Objects. The conference proceedings established the scientific basis for an international organizational framework to support…
Near-Earth objects (NEOs) have the potential to cause extensive damage and loss of life on Earth. Advancements in NEO discovery, trajectory prediction, and deflection technology indicate that an impact could be prevented, with sufficient…
Near-Earth asteroid 2024 YR4 was discovered on 2024-12-27 and its probability of Earth impact in December 2032 peaked at about 3% on 2025-02-18. Additional observations ruled out Earth impact by 2025-02-23. However, the probability of lunar…
We have carried out simulations to predict the performance of a new space-based telescopic survey operating at thermal infrared wavelengths that seeks to discover and characterize a large fraction of the potentially hazardous near-Earth…
We consider synchronized trains of sub-picosecond pulses generated by mode-locked lasers applied to deflection of near Earth objects (NEO) on collision course with Earth. Our method is designed to avoid a predicted collision of the NEO with…
Imminent impactors may be detected only a few hours before their impact with Earth, providing a brief opportunity to characterize them before impact. We describe the characterization of imminent impactor 2024 RW$_1$, which was discovered by…
Numerical modeling has long suggested that gravitationally-bound (or so-called rubble-pile) near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) can be destroyed by tidal forces during close and slow encounters with terrestrial planets. However, tidal disruptions…