Photo Credit: Hillary Aiken / B612

On June 30th, individuals, astronomy groups, schools, and organizations will come together, look into the skies and celebrate Asteroid Day.

On June 30th, individuals, astronomy groups, schools, museums and organizations from around the world will come together, look into the skies and their browsers to celebrate Asteroid Day. As the first and earliest founding partner of Asteroid Day, B612 is thrilled to see Asteroid Day’s global reach grow and sustain, even during a global pandemic.  

This year’s Asteroid Day theme is the 25th launch anniversary of NASA’s NEAR-Shoemaker spacecraft, and the 2021 launch of three new asteroid missions, NASA’s Lucy, NEA Scout and DART – the world’s first mission to test an asteroid deflection technique. B612 is excited about these upcoming missions, in particular the DART mission which we have written about in the past.  Allan Posner, an Asteroid Institute astrodynamicist, worked on the NEAR-Shoemaker space and Carolyn Shoemaker is one of the Institute’s strategic advisors.

In prior years, Asteroid Day brought asteroid experts, notables and space agencies leaders together in Luxembourg for a live broadcast. Due to the COVID pandemic last year, Asteroid Day LIVE was produced from living rooms and offices around the world as it is again this year. Asteroid Day TV, a 24/7 broadcast of asteroid programming launched June 1 and runs up to the 2021 Asteroid Day LIVE premiere on June 30. 

This year, a number of Asteroid Institute researchers and strategic advisors are participating in Asteroid Day activities including Dr. Lynne Jones, Dr. Marc Buie, Scott Manley, Dr. Zeljko Ivezic, Cosmonaut Dumitru-Dorin Prunariu, Dr. Brian May, guitarist from QUEEN and, of course, Dr. Ed Lu, the Executive Director of the Asteroid Institute. Check out Asteroid Day’s website  (and our social platforms: Facebook and Twitter) for programming details!