Sentinel

B612’s 15th Anniversary by Clark Chapman

October 7 marked 15 years since B612 was formed to protect the Earth from asteroid impacts. Each day this week, five founding board members will each reflect on B612’s 15 years.  The post below is written by B612 founding board member, Clark Chapman. Clark is a planetary scientist whose...

Analysis of Asteroid Telescope Performance is Published

A new set of analysis tools for predicting the performance of telescopes for finding and tracking Near Earth Asteroids was published by B612 Foundation in the Astronomical Journal. The article was authored by B612 Mission, Scientist Marc W. Buie; B612 Mission Director, Harold J. Reitsema;...

Tracking killer asteroids

In December 2004, astronomers in Arizona discovered an asteroid the size of a cruise ship that appeared to be on a collision course with Earth. Initial observations of the space rock, known as Apophis, suggested that it had a very good chance of striking our...

Changing the Course of the Solar System | Ed Lu

Ed Lu is 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 current work unveiling the secrets of the inner solar system with the Sentinel Mission. Ed...

John Troeltzsch Interview: finding Near-Earth Objects

John Troeltzsch is the Kepler mission program manager for Ball Aerospace. He received his Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Colorado in 1983 and was immediately hired by Ball Aerospace. While working at Ball, he continued his studies at C.U. and...

Our response to the NASA Planetary Defense Office

We have good news to report. The field of Planetary Defense has taken a step forward with the announcement of the formation of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) within NASA. This new office was created in response to the highly critical report by the...

B612’s Progress Report Vol. 1: Engaging the World in Planetary Defense

2015 saw tremendous advances in B612's education, advocacy, science and technology efforts. This year, our Sentinel technical team discovered new optimizations of Sentinel's capabilities (see Lunar Planetary Conference), and we continue to believe that Sentinel is the best technical solution to the asteroid discovery problem. We...

The History of B612 Foundation

  B612 Foundation is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization dedicated to planetary defense from asteroids. Founded in 2002, in our first decade, we worked to find technical solutions for asteroid deflection, assuming the necessary first step of discovering and tracking threatening asteroids would be managed by the...

The Nominal Sentinel Orbit

The Sentinel orbit is a long way from Earth, so it won’t observe the same objects that ground-based telescopes are looking at. But it will find objects that are a large distance from Earth. The Nominal Sentinel Orbit is the Sentinel orbit, which is at the...