Asteroid Institute Mission Director Harold Reitsema recently presented at the National Academies of Science on the work that B612 has done on space-based asteroid observation missions. The National Academies of Sciences has been tasked to explore the capabilities of space-based telescopes, including exploring the relative advantages...
The Hayabusa2 spacecraft has spent the last few months surveying the asteroid Ryugu with its array of sensors and micro rovers with an eye to finding suitable sites to sample. Launched in 2016 the Japanese mission aims to return samples of this asteroid from above...
Fifty years ago today, astronaut Rusty Schweickart had 5 minutes alone above the Earth. 2019 is the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 9 mission, crewed by Jim McDivitt, Dave Scott, and B612 co-founder Rusty Schweickart. There will be many celebrations of the mission. Some were this...
Six years ago, a meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia injuring over 1,500 people and damaging 7,000 buildings across six cities. This event caused people around the world to ask: What are we doing about asteroids? The answer is: A whole lot. Scientists at the Asteroid Institute are building detection tools to...
B612 Founder Rusty Schweickart recently spoke to Space.com about asteroids and Apollo 9. You can read the full interview here. "In order to protect the Earth, you've got to know where the asteroids are and where they're headed, and we realized at one point several years...
[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] We are pleased to share this year's annual progress report. As you’ll read, 2018 has been an important year for B612, the Asteroid Institute, and the field of asteroid science and education. We continue to leverage the investments...
Over the past decade, B612, and now the Asteroid Institute, have argued for the importance of finding and tracking Near Earth Asteroids. Consistent with the Asteroid Day 100X Declaration, we have supported efforts to increase the rate of discovery and tracking of asteroids, from LSST to...
Last month, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) moved into the final design and assembly phase. The DART mission will send a spacecraft to crash into the secondary body of the binary asteroid 65803 Didymos in order to demonstrate the kinetic impact technique needed to...
JAXA’s Hayabusa-2 mission recently achieved its objective of landing two robot rovers on the surface of the asteroid 162173 Ryugu. This is an exciting first, and a significant move forward to understanding what asteroids can teach us about the origins of our solar system. You can read...
NASA recently announced it is supporting the building of two additional ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) telescopes to be built in the Southern hemisphere. This is good news as it will fill in the gaps since there are regions in the southern sky currently not...