Thursday 22 May 2013, ESA inaugurated the NEO-CC, the NEO (Near Earth Object) Coordination Centre in Frascati, near Rome, at ESRIN (European Space Research Institute), also known as ESA Centre for Earth Observation. Its purpose is to be a coordination hub of the information network about NEOs, the objects such as asteroids and comets whose orbits pass close to Earth.

The NEO-CC is part of the Space Situational Awareness (SSA), the European program that has as its primary purpose the identification of hazards from space. The objects included in the NEO category are nearly 10,000, ranging in size from a few meters to some kilometers in length. In addition to these there’s the growing problem of space debris: in general, they are dangerous for satellites, spacecraft passing by and for the International Space Station but sometimes they may fall on Earth and a few pieces don’t disintegrate during reentry.

On February 15, 2013 a meteorite with a diameter estimated at about 20 meters exploded over the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia, fragmenting in “pebbles” that hit the area with a total energy estimated around 20-30 times the atomic bomb used against Hiroshima.

That meteorite was really small compared to the asteroid that on May 31, 2013 will pass a few million kilometers from Earth and to others that in recent years passed even closer. If one of them were to hit the planet the results would be catastrophic and this is the reason why both NASA and ESA have increased the budget for their search.

The NEO-CC is at the center of an international network of observation that will try to trace the trajectories of objects that get dangerously close to Earth. It’s not easy because many are invisible or nearly so but in many other cases it will be possible to keep an eye on them. There’s still no defense system that can allows us to destroy any object on a collision course with the planet but finding them in advance would be very helpful.

The collision of an asteroid like the one that will pass close to Earth in the coming days, with a diameter estimated at about 2.7 km (almost 1,7 miles), could cause a global catastrophe, that of a smaller object could cause damage in a limited area, such as the one that hit Russia. Especially in the latter case, locating it in time might allow the evacuation of the area. The NEO-CC has therefore a scientific purpose but it could also help save many lives.

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