Near-Earth object its mission, Rosetta was crashed into the comet′s surface in 2016. Near-Earth object A near-Earth object (NEO) is any small Solar System body whose orbit brings it to proximity with Earth. By convention, a Solar System body is a NEO if its closest approach to the Sun (perihelion) is less than 1.3 astronomical units (AU). If a NEO's orbit crosses the Earth's and the object is larger than across, it is considered a potentially hazardous object (PHO). Most known PHOs and NEOs are asteroids, but a small fraction are comets. There are over 19,000 known near-Earth asteroids (NEAs), over a
Near-Earth object to the Earth was above the surface. It was captured by two all-sky cameras of the European Fireball Network, which for the first time enabled geometric calculations of the orbit of such a body. On March 18, 2004, LINEAR announced that a asteroid, 2004 FH, would pass the Earth that day at only , about one-tenth the distance to the Moon, and the closest miss ever noticed until then. They estimated that similar-sized asteroids come as close about every two years. On March 31, 2004, two weeks after 2004 FH, set a new record for closest recorded approach above the