Blog

B612 cofounder and Apollo 9 Astronaut Rusty Schweickart receives 2024 Legendary Explorer Award

[caption id="attachment_30228" align="alignnone" width="800"] The 2024 Explorer’s Club awardees. Pictured from left to right: Rita Cowell, Rusty Schweickart, Nico Vincent, John Shears, Callie Veelenturf (front), Frank Culbertson (back), Lynn Danaher, Dante Lauretta, Daniel S. Goldin. Credit: Felix Kunze[/caption]   Today, The Explorers Club honored Apollo 9 astronaut...

Chelyabinsk and the Changing Landscape of Planetary Defense

It has now been over a decade since the Chelyabinsk event. Like last year and the year before that, February 15th is marked within our organization, and many witnessed its aftermath as the day humanity woke up to the threat of asteroids. While NASA, B612,...

AsteroidDay
2023 Asteroid Institute Education Events

[vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_column_text css=""]B612’s Asteroid Education program increases awareness about asteroids and science through public speaking and exposure in the media. In addition to Asteroid Day, in 2023 we shared stories about our work and why the world should learn...

Asteroid Institute | Launch of Precovery Service to Refine Orbits

Asteroid Institute is one step closer to creating a reliable and accurate asteroid discovery platform with the development of ADAM::Precovery, a tool to refine asteroid orbits. For both new and old discoveries, orbit refinement (improving the orbital fit by adding new observations) can help us...

B612 launches Schweickart Prize on 20th Anniversary

This past Asteroid Day (observed on June 30th worldwide) we celebrated B612’s 20th Anniversary and the launch of the Schweickart Prize at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. The prize, named in honor of renowned Apollo 9 astronaut and B612 co-founder Rusty Schweickart...

Protecting Earth: An Astronaut’s Perspective | Rusty Schweickart at TEDxSonomaCounty

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6btgPqRod1c[/embedyt] In his TEDxSonomaCounty talk, B612 Foundation co-founder and Apollo 9 Astronaut Rusty Schweickart discusses the concept of “cosmic birth”, how humanity came into existence together, and how we must work together to protect the evolutionary future of life. Rusty takes us on a journey...

The Asteroid Institute appoints Alec Koumjian as Head of Software Engineering

[caption id="attachment_29557" align="alignleft" width="800"] Alec Koumjian led the team at the Spring Hackathon at the Googleplex campus in Palo Alto.[/caption] The Asteroid Institute has named Alec Koumjian Head of Software Engineering. In his new position, he will spearhead a team of scientists and engineers dedicated to...

Asteroid Institute | IAA Planetary Defense Conference 2023

[vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_column_text]The Asteroid Institute team presented a poster on our automated Precovery service at the 2023 IAA Planetary Defense Conference in Vienna. The poster shows the Asteroid Institute’s work creating a continuous pipeline to search for new observations of...