Web Desk: International Asteroid Day is being observed across the globe today.
The day is observed to raise public awareness about the threat posed by near-Earth objects like asteroids or comets to the earth and its population.
In December 2016 the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution, declaring 30th June as International Asteroid Day.
Near-Earth Objects, or NEOs, represent potentially catastrophic threats to our planet.
A near-Earth object is an asteroid or comet which passes close to the Earth’s orbit.
In technical terms, a NEO is considered to have a trajectory which brings it within 1.3 astronomical units of the Sun and hence within 0.3 astronomical units, or approximately 45 million kilometres, of the Earth’s orbit.
NEOs generally result from objects that have experienced gravitational perturbations from nearby planets, moving them into orbits that allow them to come close to the Earth.
The International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN) and the Space Mission Planning Advisory Group (SMPAG) are two entities established in 2014 as a result of United Nations-endorsed recommendations, and represent important mechanisms at the global level for strengthening coordination in the area of planetary defence.
The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) works with IAWN, which maintains an internationally recognized clearing house for the receipt, acknowledgement and processing of all NEO observations collected from observatories worldwide, by facilitating the dissemination of information related to near-Earth objects to Member States.
