11/10/2021 (Agence Europe) – The European Space Agency (ESA) announced on Monday 11 October the opening of a new office, the Near-Earth Object Coordination Center (NEOCC), which replaces ESRIN, the European Space Research Institute, in Frascati. One of the Centre’s roles is to classify any asteroid with a greater than zero chance of colliding with the Earth and to gather all available observations to determine the precise orbit of each potentially dangerous object. This follows the adoption of a renewed ‘space security’ programme (see EUROPE 12379/2) at the Seville ministerial meeting in 2019. (PH)