Asteroid Dashboard

Near-Earth objects (NEOs) are asteroids and comets whose orbits bring them close to Earth's orbital path. While the vast majority of asteroids reside in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, gravitational perturbations from Jupiter and close encounters with other bodies can nudge asteroids into orbits that cross or approach Earth's path around the Sun. NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory continuously monitors these objects, calculating their trajectories and assessing potential impact risks.

Asteroid tracking is a global effort involving dozens of observatories on every continent. Surveys like the Catalina Sky Survey, Pan-STARRS, and ATLAS collectively discover thousands of new NEOs each year. When a new asteroid is detected, its position is measured over multiple nights to calculate a preliminary orbit. Radar observations can further refine the orbit and even reveal the asteroid's shape and rotation. An asteroid is classified as "potentially hazardous" if its estimated diameter exceeds 140 meters and its minimum orbit intersection distance (MOID) with Earth is less than 0.05 AU (about 7.5 million kilometers).

Planetary defense has moved from science fiction to active science. NASA's DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission in September 2022 successfully altered the orbit of the moonlet Dimorphos by crashing a spacecraft into it, demonstrating that kinetic impact can deflect a hazardous asteroid. The European Space Agency's Hera mission, launched in 2024, will revisit Dimorphos to study the effects in detail. Meanwhile, NASA's planned NEO Surveyor space telescope aims to discover 90% of all NEOs larger than 140 meters, the threshold size capable of causing regional devastation.