images courtesy of independent.co.uk, thesun.co.uk, cnn.com
The B612 Foundation believes we should find threatening asteroids before they find us. Today’s meteor explosion over Chelyabinsk is a wake-up call that the Earth orbits the Sun in a shooting gallery of asteroids, and that these asteroids sometimes hit the Earth. Later today, a separate and larger asteroid, 2012 DA14, narrowly missed the Earth passing beneath the orbits of our communications satellites. We have the technology to deflect asteroids, but we cannot do anything about the objects we don’t know exist. To date, less than 1% of asteroids larger than the one that leveled Tunguska in 1908 have been tracked. The B612 Foundation Sentinel Space Telescope, to be launched in 2018, will provide a comprehensive map of the locations and trajectories of threatening asteroids and will give humanity the decades of warning needed to prevent asteroid impacts with existing technology. By the end of its planned lifetime, Sentinel will have discovered well over 90% of the asteroids that could destroy entire regions of Earth on impact (those larger than 350ft in diameter) and more than 50% of the currently unknown DA14-like near-Earth asteroids.
The B612 Foundation has undertaken this Sentinel project as a non-governmental initiative, somewhat akin to a growing number of private space ventures originated in the past few years. The foundation, however, is not undertaking this project for profit; we are a non-profit corporation. Our motivation is strictly to ensure the survival of life on Earth – all of it. And while NASA is cooperating with us by providing certain communication and analytic services, we are excited, as a private venture, to welcome the participation of all the crew of Spaceship Earth in this great endeavor.
Does the crew of Spaceship Earth raise our awareness and accept responsibility for our voyage into the future? Or do we sit back as passengers, comfortably assuming that there must be a captain and crew doing this job on our behalf?
The B612 Sentinel mission is testament to our belief that we, together, are responsible for the future of life on our small planet; we invite you to join us in addressing this cosmic challenge.
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B612′s co-founder and Chair Emeritus Rusty Schweickart has an important op-ed posted today in The Guardian. Please take a moment to read his thoughts, too.
Hi there,
As somewhat of a scientist, I commend your efforts at finding asteroids representing a potential threat to us earthlings.
Regarding today’s meteor explosion over Chelyabinsk, please note as follows:
> It is not clear to me why a solid rock or chunk of metal could explode upon entering the atmosphere: is it because the solid rock and or metal suddenly vaporizes from within? If so, why and how? Why would it not gradually sort of ablade?
> Can you describe how could the orbit of a threatening asteroid/meteor be readily altered so as to prevent it from striking the earth?
> Is your Form 990 available for viewing
Thanks
> It is not clear to me why a solid rock or chunk of metal could explode upon entering the atmosphere: is it because the solid rock and or metal suddenly vaporizes from within? If so, why and how? Why would it not gradually sort of ablate? Can you describe how could the orbit of a threatening asteroid/meteor be readily altered so as to prevent it from striking the earth?<
See the B612 Foundation's links to articles about the "gravity tractor" here: http://b612foundation.org/the-gravity-tractor-deflection-concept/
An ion-engined craft is placed near an asteroid, in the same orbit. It then slowly thrusts away, at a slight angle to the original path, but does not thrust hard enough to escape. The gravitational attraction between them causes the asteroid to follow the craft into a slightly different orbit. With enough lead time, even a small angle of deflection adds up to enough distance to cause the asteroid's new orbit to miss Earth.
> It is not clear to me why a solid rock or chunk of metal could explode upon entering the atmosphere: is it because the solid rock and or metal suddenly vaporizes from within? If so, why and how? Why would it not gradually sort of ablate? <
If the object contains cracks or other structural imperfections, the stresses of deceleration and heating can cause it to burst into fragments.
Once spotted, we would need to interrupt a projectile on a collision course with our planet. Are we capable of doing that if it is already hurling through space at incredible speeds?
I like what you and some day I believe I would to work for you
I for got like
Backstory is and should be a single word.
The singularized version conveys a more powerful….
Backstory.
I’ve just discovered your website and I’m on board!
Thx for your efforts on all of our behalf;
When I say all, I mean the expanded all which include animals and forests- “ask ” the 100,000 trees and innumerable animals that perished at Tunguska!!
Monterino Overson
Google [ x ] labber in search of a new assignment!
It was a comet may be, because many people didn’t find any parts of this meteor or any craters. Some persons find small stones with diameter about 2 or 3 mm( 0.1 inch), but it is not clear they from space or not. We will know it after 1 month exactly.
Dmitri Gorskine, Montreal, Canada
I read an article on 2012DA14 that stated it was traveling at 17,400 mph. That sounds very slow to me, was the article correct? What would orbital capture speed be?
I applaud the work you folks are doing, this latest incident in Russia proves just how real the threat is. I have written about it on AskTheScienceGuru.com
http://www.askthescienceguru.com/russian-meteorite-1-in-100-year-event
I would love to talk with you some time about it on AskTheScienceGuru
Stuff has been hitting the planet and destroying and killing people for quite some time. The Chicago fire that killed close to 300 people got more press than the Peshtigo Incident that was reported to be an air-burst that started a firestorm where temperatures exceeded over 2000 degrees Fahrenheit and more than 2000 people perished within less that an hour – ON THE SAME NIGHT. There were also numerous fires that started in the thumb of Michigan’s mitten that evening and spread West in a cone shape; Chicago being at the southern extremity and Pestigo, Wisconsin at the northern point. That’s just one something hit the Amazon in the 1920′s and burned about 800 sq. miles of rain forest – it appears to be more often than has been (up until now with instant global communication) commonly reported. Recently – in the Nixon era a blast close to 2 megatons was reported somewhere in the South Pacific and thought to be a nuclear test – maybe it’s time for another documentary on comets, asteroids and other dangers from space including a look at things like the Vredefort Ring. Celestial events have been reported throughout history and while the Earth seems to be very old – civilization is not; and finding artifacts of high technological accomplishment in the geological strata should be alarming enough to reshape our paradigms in the cosmological sense. I’m just saying.
How detailed have the plans evolved? I read that co-orbiting with Venus is an idea. Are we thinking about the Sol-Venus L5 location for the Sentinel?
Bravo once again for your efforts, cause, and projected work. This, “Once in a life time” event that vented the shock, light, and debris over the Russian Urals, was in no way a “Once in a life time” event, in my opinion, as many are saying, especially NASA people. How do they know this, since they did not even know this thing was coming, as they don’t know about the many more with sights on our planet that have not been detected by anyone yet.
I think NASA and others are providing a statement that they can, in NO way, back up. They are guessing, and that’s about the bottom line. As I said, they have no idea what is on the way here, because they are not looking for all objects, just the few that they are lucky enough to catch, or are told about by others who are looking. I guess when the next one explodes overhead, they will once again say… that was another, Once in a life time” event.
I hope that all your efforts are rewarded with support and funding, maybe funding diverted from some pet projects over there at NASA that really don’t need to be executed in the next few years. Those can wait… this object find and track effort is very important to the world. Much more so than finding a drop of 1 million year old water on a planet way out there, again, in my opinion. Thanks for what you are doing!
Mike
The danger posed to us by Near-Earth asteroids extends beyond just the physical damage these cosmic rocks and piles of debris can inflict upon us. The sudden appearance of a fast-moving object from space can easily be mistaken by observers as the sign of a first strike upon them by an enemy. With no prior warning of its arrival, incoming NEOs, as evidenced by the photos and videos from the Chelyabinsk event, demonstrate clearly that they can be viewed as acts of overt hostile aggression. This risk stresses the need for a much increased capability to scan near-Earth space and know much better than we currently do what is flying through the inner Solar System.
It is clear that many NEOs are still undetected or tracked. The task imposed by Congress to find all NEOs of at least 150 meters cross-measure or bigger is certainly not enough to assure safety and security. Even asteroid 2012 DA14 does not qualify as a Potentially Hazardous Astroid, by the strict terms of its definition, but since it is probably 25-30 times more massive than the Chelyabinsk bolide, we can certainly imagine how dangerous that asteroid could really be if it had been on a trajectory that brought it to the surface of our planet. My studies of the population of NEOs reveal that the census of NEOs we currently have is hugely deficient in defining the danger and that we over-estimate our ability to quanitify what lurks in near-Earth space.