The Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) is the

Jet Propulsion Laboratory The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in the City of La Cañada Flintridge, California, United States. Founded in the 1930s by Caltech researchers, JPL is owned by NASA an ...

(JPL) center for computing asteroid and

comet A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena ar ...

orbits and their probability of Earth impact. CNEOS is located at

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

Pasadena, California Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district. I ...

. CNEOS computes high-precision orbits for

Near-Earth Objects A near-Earth object (NEO) is any small Solar System body whose orbit brings it into proximity with Earth. By convention, a Solar System body is a NEO if its closest approach to the Sun (perihelion) is less than 1.3 astronomical units (AU). ...

(NEOs). These

orbit In celestial mechanics, an orbit is the curved trajectory of an object such as the trajectory of a planet around a star, or of a natural satellite around a planet, or of an artificial satellite around an object or position in space such as a p ...

solutions calculate NEO close approaches to Earth, and produce assessments of NEO impact probabilities over the next century or more. CNEOS is the home of JPL's Sentry impact monitoring system, which performs analyses of possible future orbits of hazardous

asteroids An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere. ...

, searching for impact possibilities over the next century. Similarly, its Scout system monitors new potential asteroid discoveries and computes the possible range of future motions. In the event of a potential impact (known as a virtual impactor), impact time and probability are estimated. CNEOS also provides the NEO Deflection App, which computes how far a hypothetical asteroid would move if deflected by a known amount at an earlier time.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Near-Earth Object Studies, Center for NASA groups, organizations, and centers Near-Earth object tracking