Our Mission
Dedicated to the discovery and deflection of asteroids.
Our role
B612 is an organization that works towards protecting the Earth from asteroid impacts and informing and forwarding world-wide decision-making on planetary defense issues. B612 provides a non-governmental voice on the risks, options, and implications of asteroid data while advancing the technical means by which that data is acquired. We work to make interpretation of asteroid data open and accessible, and we serve as an informed source for an international community of policy makers and scientists who can best help to achieve these goals.
Technical Excellence
Our extended team of staff, collaborators, and partners combined are the best and are unparalleled in expertise. The success of our work is dependent on it.
Leadership
We believe it is our responsibility to put our knowledge and expertise to work for the betterment of humanity.
Exploration
We are driven by a thirst for knowledge. Our commitment to discovery is fed by a sense of wonder for the universe, and for our evolving capacity to explore it.
Initiative
We believe in stepping up and addressing unmet challenges. We don’t believe in wishing for the best, but instead in exploring and devising solutions with the best outcomes.
The Sentinel Mission
The Sentinel Mission was announced in 2012 for the purposes of mapping the trajectories of asteroids that may pose a future danger to humanity — giving us the time we need to deflect them. The Sentinel design is for an infrared space telescope that will orbit the Sun interior to the orbit of Earth. From this vantage point, Sentinel can provide an ideal counterpart to Earth based observatories such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope which will also track asteroids.
Together, Sentinel and LSST form an ideal combination for tracking asteroids that will eventually hit Earth. After just a decade of operation, they can find nearly 90% of impacting asteroids larger than the one that struck Tunguska, and provide decades of advance warning before impact.