Planetary Defense
Missions
Find up-to-the-minute visibilities and deeplinks for Planetary Defense targets on the Moving Target Ephemeris page and the Scientific Events Prediction page
152673 (1997 NC1)
152673 (1997 NC1) is a 440m diameter near-Earth asteroid that had a close approach on June 27th where it came within 7 lunar distances of Earth. This asteroid is interesting because it’s rotation period is unknown and it will be fairly bright for a few more weeks. If we can get enough quality lightcurves we might be able to determine how fast this asteroid rotates. 1997 NC1 will remain an opportune target up until July 8th.
2026 KU3
2026 KU3 was only just discovered at the end of May, 2026 and so not much is known about it. It’s going to have a close-approach with Earth on July 27th, coming within 8 lunar distances. This asteroid is right on the edge of what we can detect and so visiblity is limited to July 21st to July 25th.
Main-Belt Campaigns
363 (Padua)
363 (Padua) is a 97km wide main-belt asteroid located roughly 2.7 AU away from Earth. Its name comes from the city of Padua in Italy. Right now Padua has a brightness of around 13 magnitudes which means it’s bright enough for us to collect good quality lightcurves.
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