Back مؤسسة B612 Arabic B612 Foundation Danish B612 Foundation German Fundación B612 Spanish B612 Foundation Finnish Fondation B612 French קרן B612 HE Fondazione B612 Italian B612財団 Japanese B612 Foundation NB
 | |
| Formation | October 7, 2002[1] |
|---|---|
| Founder | Dr. Clark Chapman Dr. Piet Hut Dr. Ed Lu Rusty Schweickart |
| Type | 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization |
| 54-2078469 | |
| Registration no. | C2467899 |
| Purpose | Planetary defense |
| Location | |
| Products | Asteroid Institute |
Key people | Dr. Marc Buie, SMS Tom Gavin, SSRT Dr. Scott Hubbard, SPA Dr. David Liddle, BoD Dr. Ed Lu, Director, Asteroid Institute, Diane Murphy, PR Dr. Harold Reitsema, SMD Danica Remy, CEO John Troeltzsch, SPM |
| Website | B612 Foundation |
The B612 Foundation is a private nonprofit foundation headquartered in Mill Valley, California, United States, dedicated to planetary science and planetary defense against asteroids and other near-Earth object (NEO) impacts. It is led mainly by scientists, former astronauts and engineers from the Institute for Advanced Study, Southwest Research Institute, Stanford University, NASA and the space industry.
As a non-governmental organization it has conducted two lines of related research to help detect NEOs that could one day strike the Earth, and find the technological means to divert their path to avoid such collisions. It also assisted the Association of Space Explorers in helping the United Nations establish the International Asteroid Warning Network, as well as a Space Missions Planning Advisory Group to provide oversight on proposed asteroid deflection missions.
In 2012, the foundation announced it would design and build a privately financed asteroid-finding space observatory, the Sentinel Space Telescope, to be launched in 2017–2018. Once stationed in a heliocentric orbit around the Sun similar to that of Venus, Sentinel's supercooled infrared detector would have helped identify dangerous asteroids and other NEOs that pose a risk of collision with Earth. In the absence of substantive planetary defense provided by governments worldwide, B612 attempted a fundraising campaign to cover the Sentinel Mission, estimated at $450 million for 10 years of operation. Fundraising was unsuccessful, and the program was cancelled in 2017, with the Foundation pursuing a constellation of smaller satellites instead.[2]
The B612 Foundation is named for the asteroid home of the eponymous hero of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's 1943 book The Little Prince.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
B612 Foundation Historywas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ "B612 studying smallsat missions to search for near Earth objects". June 20, 2017.