Asteroid Institute

2024 Prize Winner Joe DeMartini Presents at 9th IAA Planetary Defense Conference

At the 9th IAA Planetary Defense Conference, Joe DeMartini, the inaugural recipient of the Schweickart Prize, delivered a virtual presentation on his winning proposal: the SUnward NEO Surveillance and Early Twilight Detection (SUNSET) Collaboration. This project aims to address the critical challenge of detecting Sunward...

Asteroid Institute | IAA Planetary Defense Conference 2025

At the 9th IAA Planetary Defense Conference, Asteroid Institute engineer Kathleen Kiker delivered a virtual presentation titled LSST & Impactors: How Much Warning Time for Asteroid Impacts Will We Have in the Vera Rubin Era? Kathleen presented findings from simulation-based analyses using synthetic impactor populations and...

Open-Source Software for Asteroid Orbit Analysis

At the Spring 2025 Asteroid Institute Hackathon in Seattle, researcher Dr. Joachim Moeyens and Head of Software Engineering Alec Koumjian presented our suite of open-source tools to the LSST Interdisciplinary Network for Collaboration and Computing (LINCC). These tools are designed to help researchers, students, and...

Asteroid Institute | Spring 2025 Hackathon Brings our Team and DiRAC together

The Asteroid Institute team outside the University of Washington Physics and Astronomy Building. From left to right: Delphine Veronese-Milin, Alec Koumjian, Joachim Moeyens, Ed Lu, Danica Remy, Nate Tellis, Kathleen Kiker, Colleen Fiaschetti Earlier this month, our Asteroid Institute team gathered at the University of Washington...

Delphine Veronese-Milin Finds Her Orbit at B612

After completing an internship at NASA Ames and earning a bachelor’s degree in astrophysics from UC Berkeley, Delphine Veronese-Milin knew she wanted to take a break from academics to gain real-world experience. With the pandemic in full swing, she never could have predicted she’d go...

ABC News: Dr. Ed Lu Talks about Asteroid 2024 YR4

 Watch Asteroid Institute Director and B612 CoFounder Dr. Ed Lu on ABC News to discuss asteroid 2024 YR4. While initial estimates raised concerns, new data confirms 2024 YR4 is no longer a threat to Earth....

Asteroid Institute Analyzes 2024 YR4 Impact Risk

As of Feb 25, 2025, Asteroid 2024 YR4 is no longer poses a significant risk of hitting the Earth. Visit the NASA Small Body Database for the most up to date information on this asteroid. The engineering team at Asteroid Institute has been busy since early...

A Stark Reminder: The Chelyabinsk Anniversary and Asteroid 2024 YR4

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCEC4EaY00Q&t[/embedyt]   Twelve years ago, on February 15, 2013, the world received an undeniable wake-up call about the dangers posed by near-Earth asteroids. Without warning, a 18-meter asteroid streaked across the sky before exploding over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk. The resulting shockwave damaged over 7,200...

Asteroid Institute Engineers present at 2024 ADASS Conference

Asteroid Institute engineers presented online at this year’s Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems (ADASS) conference, held in November. The ADASS conference serves as a premier forum for exchanging ideas on software development and data analysis within the astronomical community. The institute’s Head of Software Engineering,...