Earth’s annual journey around the Sun represents a perilous cosmic voyage and for thousands of years humans have remained blissfully ignorant of the dangers of asteroids and comets, coronal mass ejections, solar radiation flares and other cosmic events that threaten our daily existence. The Global Space Governance Study is now addressing the technical challenges and regulatory actions for a comprehensive planetary defence strategy.

Systems to monitor asteroids and space debris to predict and help prevent space-linked emergency situations are still in their infancy. ROOM presents an overview of methods, technologies and software used in creating a data analysis system for monitoring potentially dangerous asteroids and man-made space debris.

The popular press often propagates the notion that Jupiter has a profound role in shielding Earth and the terrestrial planets from impacts and the question of whether such observed impacts were ever Earth-threatening in the first place has gone largely unchallenged until now.

Comets and asteroids colliding with Earth pose a serious threat to humanity yet we lack effective means to discover themand alert the public to imminent dangers. Even the impact of a small celestial body may lead to serious loss of life, sigificant material and ecological damage