To date 1681 Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) have been identified as possible threats to our planet. PHAs are asteroids with a diameter of at least 140 m whose orbits pass the Earth’s orbit within a distance of 7.5 million km. Asteroids are rocky debris left over from the initial agglomeration of the inner planets that include Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. The impact of such large Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) has contributed to mass extinctions and has changed the course of evolution. Moreover, it is a scientific certainty that NEOs will continue to hit the Earth at irregular intervals in the future with the potential for catastrophic damage to life and property. In the NEOShield project scientists are now working to assess the threat of such NEOs and develop solutions for dealing with big asteroids on a collision course with our planet.

The artwork “hazardous asteroids” depicts the orbits of all known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids identified as of January 2016. The center of the image marks the sun, Earth is seen as a small black dot while the outer limit is defined by the orbit of Jupiter. Collisions of asteroids with Earth have occurred frequently over geological time and have radically altered the course of evolutionary history. The next occurrence of such an event will be the close approach of the PHA Apophis (diameter 330 m) in 2029. Data for “hazardous asteroids” was supplied by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology.