An EU funded project that aims to protect the Earth from collisions with near-Earth objects, or NEOs, celestial flotsam such as asteroids or comets that can score direct hits on the planet. For years, agencies like NASA and the European Space Agency have been studying NEOs: asteroids, comets, and other space debris in close proximity of the Earth. The NEOShield project for the first time wants to investigate how to knock them off course with rockets, bombs, or gravitational pull.

The NEOShield undertaking consists of research institutes, universities and industrial partners in Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Spain, as well as in the U.S. and Russia. The goal is to organize, prepare and implement mitigation measures by focusing on the three most promising asteroid threat-reduction techniques: kinetic impactors, gravity tractors, and the explosive blast-deflection method.