Near-Earth Object

A near-Earth object (NEO) is a Solar System object whose orbit brings it into close proximity with the Earth. All NEOs have a closest approach to the Sun (perihelion) of less than 1.3 AU. They include a few thousand near-Earth asteroids (NEAs), near-Earth comets, a number of solar-orbiting spacecraft, and meteoroids large enough to be tracked in space before striking the Earth. It is now widely accepted that collisions in the past have had a significant role in shaping the geological and biological history of the planet. NEOs have become of increased interest since the 1980s because of increased awareness of the potential danger some of the asteroids or comets pose to the Earth, and active mitigations are being researched.

Those NEOs that are asteroids (NEA) have orbits that lie partly between 0.983 and 1.3 astronomical units away from the Sun. When an NEA is detected it is submitted to the IAU's Minor Planet Center (located at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) for cataloging. Some near-Earth asteroids' orbits intersect that of Earth's so they pose a collision danger. The United States, European Union and other nations are currently scanning for NEOs in an effort called Spaceguard.

In the United States, NASA has a congressional mandate to catalogue all NEOs that are at least 1 kilometer wide, as the impact of such an object would be catastrophic. As of August 2012, there had been 848 near-Earth asteroids larger than 1km discovered, but only 154 are potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs). It was estimated in 2006 that 20% of the mandated objects have not yet been found. As a result of NEOWISE in 2011, it is estimated that 93% of the NEAs larger than 1km have been found and that only about 70 remain to be discovered.

Potentially hazardous objects (PHOs) are currently defined based on parameters that measure the object's potential to make threatening close approaches to the Earth. Mostly objects with an Earth minimum orbit intersection distance (MOID) of 0.05 AU or less and an absolute magnitude (H) of 22.0 or less (a rough indicator of large size) are considered PHOs. Objects that cannot approach closer to the Earth (i.e. MOID) than 0.05 AU (7,500,000 km; 4,600,000 mi), or are smaller than about 150 m (500 ft) in diameter (i.e. H = 22.0 with assumed albedo of 13%), are not considered PHOs. The NASA Near Earth Object Catalog also includes the approach distances of asteroids and comets measured in lunar distances, and this usage has become the more usual unit of measure used by the press and mainstream media in discussing these objects.

Some NEOs are of high interest because they can be physically explored with lower mission velocity even than the Moon, due to their combination of low velocity with respect to Earth (ΔV) and small gravity, so they may present interesting scientific opportunities both for direct geochemical and astronomical investigation, and as potentially economical sources of extraterrestrial materials for human exploitation. This makes them an attractive target for exploration. As of 2008, two near-Earth objects have been visited by spacecraft: 433 Eros, by NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous probe, and 25143 Itokawa, by the JAXA Hayabusa mission.