EU-ESA Workshop on Meteor Observations for Planetary Defence

Session

Imminent impactors: discovery, alerts and coordinated response

4 Nov 2026, 11:00

Petralia Sottana, Sicily

11. Imminent Impactors: Are We Ready

Hadrien Devillepoix

04/11/2026, 11:00

Meteor science has traditionally been done by observing short transient events for which there is no warning for. We are in an era where we detect some asteroids before they impact. And, coincidentally, these metre-scale objects are in the sweet spot for meteorite survival. Imminent impactors directly close the loop between the small Solar System body science driven by telescopes and...

15. Meerkat: An Operational Software System for Automated Imminent Impactor Detection and Community Alerting

Francisco Ocaña (ESA ESAC)

04/11/2026, 11:25

The increasing discovery rate of near-Earth objects requires software systems capable not only of orbit analysis, but also of continuous data ingestion, automated decision-making, and rapid dissemination of actionable information. We present Meerkat Asteroid Guard [1], the European Space Agency's operational imminent impactor monitoring system, developed and maintained at the Near-Earth Object...

16. ESA’s Flyeye-1 Telescope: A Wide-Field Survey for Imminent Impactors at Mt. Mufara

Dora Föhring (ESA NEOCC)

04/11/2026, 11:50

The Flyeye-1 is the first in a planned network of wide-field survey telescopes developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) to strengthen Europe’s capability to discover Near-Earth Objects (NEOs). Its permanent home will be the observatory currently under construction at Mt. Mufara in the Madonie mountains of Sicily.

The Flyeye’s significance to the meteor community lies at the first step...