This European scientific project was a collaboration between the French Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur (OCA) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR).

[2] The project began October 1996 and ceased observations in April 1999 for a refurbishing.

[2] The operation used a 90 cm Schmidt telescope of the OCA at Calern, near the city of Nice in southeastern France.

A combination of a CCD camera[4] and a software package[5] were used for automated detection of moving objects.

For example, the discovery of the two listed asteroids on the ODAS website, (129562) 1997 CJ23 and (164798) 1999 JC1, are now officially credited to Spacewatch and CSS, respectively.