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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...

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...

How the Chelyabinsk Blast Changed the Way Humanity Deals with Asteroid Threats

On the ten-year anniversary of the Chelyabinsk event, we asked esteemed science journalist Stuart Clark to help tell the story of this meteorite bolide and the instrumental changes it instigated in how individuals, governments, and space agencies think about asteroid threats. An internationally read author,...

Asteroid Institute | Kathleen Kiker on Precovery at 2022 LSST@Europe4

Asteroid Institute engineer Kathleen Kiker speaks on Precovery, a service of ADAM, at the 2022 LSST European Conference.     Asteroid Institute, a program of B612, and partner of LSST and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, virtually joined speakers at this year’s LSST@Europe 4 conference in Rome, Italy....

Asteroid Institute | 2022 Summer Interns Highlight

Summer Interns Enrich Asteroid Institute Crew   This past summer, Asteroid Institute (a program of B612) in partnership with the University of Washington, hosted a group of seven interns who helped with an assortment of tasks, including data ingestion for our Asteroid Discovery Analysis and Mapping (ADAM)...

Tito’s CHEERS $1 million Challenge Grant

[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] Your donation doubled: Tito’s CHEERS program matches your gifts before December 31!   Tito’s CHEERS has issued an exciting challenge grant to our organization: they will match donations up to $1 million to help us enable scientific exploration, economic development,...

Chelyabinsk Meteor
Nine-Year Anniversary of the Chelyabinsk Asteroid Blast

Nine years ago today, an asteroid exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia. It was only about 20 meters in diameter (or 55-65 feet) — by meteor and asteroid standards, pretty small, but as you may remember, it packed a punch. The explosion injured over 1,500 people and...