
Author: NASA
1 min read
Near-Earth objects (NEOs) are asteroids and comets that orbit the Sun like the planets with orbits that come within 30 million miles of Earth’s orbit. NASA established the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) to manage the agency’s ongoing efforts in Planetary Defense, which is the “applied planetary science” to address the NEO impact hazard. One key element of the PDCO is NASA’s NEO Observations program, which is composed of projects to find, track, and characterize NEOs. Here’s what we’ve found so far. This page is updated monthly with the most up-to-date numbers.
> SYSTEM LOG // ENTRY 549903
> CATEGORY: ASTEROIDS
> PUBLISHED: 2023.08.31_0800Z
> ASSETS_ATTACHED: 01
> SOURCE: NASA.GOV/WP-JSON
SRC: NASA-PLANETARY-DEFENSE-INFOGRAPHIC-ENGLISH-PDCO-INFOGRAPHIC-08312023Fig 01
New research led by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California has revealed the identity of a puzzling near-Earth object by precisely tracking its motion through space and using powerful observatories that image faint celestial objects. This object has a dual personality: Past images hadn’t revealed obvious cometlike activity, suggesting it might be …
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MarsNASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has uncovered evidence that a 245-foot-thick (75-meter-thick) stack of ancient rock on the rim of Jezero Crater was built by repeated asteroid impacts. Referred to as the “Broom Point member” by the rover’s science team, this sequence of layered bedrock is likely more than 3.9 billion years old, making it among …
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MarsNASA’s Psyche spacecraft completed its close approach of Mars on May 15, coming within 2,864 miles (4,609 kilometers) of the planet’s surface. This flyby used a gravity assist from Mars to provide a critical boost in speed and to adjust the spacecraft’s orbital plane without using any onboard propellant, sending it on its way toward …
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