Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 March 2016
The NEO Coordination Centre (NEOCC) has been established within the framework of the ESA Space Situational Awareness (SSA) Programme. Among its tasks are the coordination of observational activities and the distribution of up-to-date information on NEOs through its web portal.
The Centre is directly involved in observational campaigns with various telescopes, including ESO's VLT and ESA's OGS telescope. We are also developing a network of collaborating observatories, with a variety of capabilities, which are alerted when an important observational opportunity arises.
From a service perspective, the system hosted at the NEOCC collects information on NEOs produced by European services and makes it available to users, with a focus on objects with possible collisions with the Earth. Among the tools provided via our portal are the Risk List of all known NEOs with impact solutions, and the Priority List, which allows observers to identify NEOs in most urgent need of observations.