Chelyabinsk

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Looking Back, Looking Forward. The Next 15 Years! by Ed Lu

The post is written by B612 Co-founder and Asteroid Institute Executive Director, Ed Lu. Ed is a NASA Astronaut and an explorer whose quest is to map the unknown—whether by surveying the oceans at Liquid Robotics, leading Google Advanced Projects Team to map our neighborhoods, or his...

An Important Day – Chelyabinsk 4 years later

Today marks the four-year anniversary of the Chelyabinsk asteroid airburst. You probably recall watching the dash cam video footage of the fireball exploding over the city, which took everyone by surprise. This particular asteroid was only 17-20 meters in diameter, or about 55-65 feet. For comparison,...

Chelyabinsk: 3 Years Later

Today marks the three-year anniversary of the Chelyabinsk asteroid airburst. You probably recall watching the dash cam video footage of the fireball exploding over the city. The asteroid was only 17-20 meters in diameter. For reference, the asteroid that flattened 2,000 sq km of forest...

Space News: Policing the (Cosmic) Neighborhood

Despite its capacity for serious harm, asteroid impact is not the largest existential threat we face right now. Climate change, resource limits, pandemics, nuclear war, societal breakdown, earthquakes and tsunamis are even more alarming. What distinguishes the asteroid threat is that mitigation is seemingly straightforward,...

Asteroid Day Takes Aim at Our Cosmic Blind Spot: Threats From Above

Scientists and spacefliers will be focusing attention on near-Earth objects when the first-ever Asteroid Day plays out on Tuesday — not so much to raise money, but to raise awareness about the potential threat from above and what to do about it. That last part is...

Space Telescope Concepts Seek To Detect Smaller Near-Earth Asteroids

WASHINGTON — A privately funded space telescope originally proposed to search for larger near-Earth asteroids may also be effective in detecting smaller, but more numerous and potentially more dangerous, such objects. In a presentation at the International Academy of Astronautics’ Planetary Defense Conference in Frascati, Italy,...