Astronauts to reveal sobering data on large asteroid impacts

The Sentinel Space Telescope in orbit around the Sun. 

Credit: Ball Aerospace.

This Earth Day, Tuesday, April 22, three former NASA astronauts will present new evidence that our planet has experienced many more large-scale asteroid impacts over the past decade than previously thought; three to ten times more, in fact.

A new visualization of data from a nuclear weapons warning network, to be unveiled by B612 Foundation CEO Ed Lu during the evening event at Seattle's Museum of Flight, shows that "the only thing preventing a catastrophe from a 'city-killer' sized asteroid is blind luck."


Since 2001, 26 atomic-bomb-scale explosions have occurred in remote locations around the world, far from populated areas, made evident by a nuclear weapons test warning network.

In a recent press release B612 Foundation CEO Ed Lu states:

"This network has detected 26 multi-kiloton explosions since 2001, all of which are due to asteroid impacts. It shows that asteroid impacts are NOT rare, but actually 3-10 times more common than we previously thought."

"The fact that none of these asteroid impacts shown in the video was detected in advance is proof that the only thing preventing a catastrophe from a 'city-killer' sized asteroid is blind luck." 

"The goal of the B612 Sentinel mission is to find and track asteroids decades before they hit Earth, allowing us to easily deflect them."

The B612 Foundation is partnered with Ball Aerospace to build the Sentinel Space Telescope Mission.

Once positioned in solar orbit closer to the Sun from Earth, Sentinel will look outwards in infrared to detect hundreds of thousands of as-yet unknown near-Earth objects over 140 meters in size.

The privately-funded spacecraft is slated to launch in 2017-18 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

In addition to Lu, Space Shuttle astronaut Tom Jones and Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders will be speaking at the event, titled "Saving the Earth by Keeping Big Asteroids Away"

The event will be held at 6 p.m. PDT at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, WA.

It is free to the public and the visualization will be made available online on the B612 Foundation website.

B612 Sentinel Space Telescope to Hunt Dangerous Asteroids

Artist's Illustration of the B612 Foundation's Sentinel mission, which will search for potentially dangerous near-Earth asteroids.

CREDIT: B612

With the dangers of rogue asteroids made clear by the surprise explosion of a meteor over Russia in February, a non-profit organization is ramping up its effort to search for potentially hazardous space rocks near Earth.

The B612 Foundation was started in 2002 by former NASA astronauts Ed Lu and Rusty Schweickart with colleagues. The organization aims to launch a space telescope called Sentinel in 2017 to catalog near-Earth asteroids, including those that may pose a danger to Earth.

To date, about 90 percent of near-Earth asteroids large enough to destroy the entire planet (about 1 kilometer, or 0.6 miles wide) have been discovered, but far fewer of the smaller, city-killing size (roughly 140 meters, or 460 feet, in diameter) have been found.

"We are essentially flying blind in a cosmic shooting gallery," Scott Hubbard, B612 program architect, told reporters on Tuesday (April 9) at the 29th annual National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo.

This reality was starkly illustrated on Feb. 15, when a 55-foot-wide (17 meters) meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, just hours before an asteroid almost three times its size called 2012 DA14 flew uncomfortably close to Earth.

Sentinel's goal is to detect about 90 percent of this city-killing class of asteroids over a period of 6.5 years.

The $450 million mission is to be privately funded, though the foundation has partnered with NASA to share its data and use the agency's Deep Space Network of satellites to facilitate communications between Sentinel and the ground. NASA and lawmakers have said they enthusiastically support the mission and the B612 Foundation's efforts.

"We must better recognize what the private sector can do to aid our efforts to protect the world," Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, said during a Congressional hearing on the asteroid issue Wednesday (April 10).

Private Deep Space Asteroid Telescope Mission to be Unveiled

Artist’s impression of a 6-mile-wide asteroid striking the Earth. Scientists think approximately 70 of these dinosaur killer-sized or larger asteroids hit Earth between 3.8 and 1.8 billion years ago.

CREDIT: Don Davis

A group of scientists will unveil an audacious plan for the first privately funded deep space telescope next week - a mission that aims to map the inner solar system for potentially dangerous asteroids.

On June 28, members of the B612 Foundation will discuss plans to build, launch and operate the Sentinel Space Telescope Mission during a press conference at the Morrison Planetarium at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

The briefing will begin at 11:30 a.m. EDT (1530 GMT) and wrap up at around 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT), organization officials said in a media alert.

According to the media alert, the telescope will circle the sun and identify space rocks with orbits that cross Earth. Determining the trajectories of these asteroids will help protect Earth from cataclysmic impacts and will also help mission planners chart future expeditions deeper into the solar system.

"Mapping the great unknown of the inner solar system is the first step to opening up this next frontier," organization officials said in a statement.

"The B612 Foundation believes that humanity can harness the power of science and technology to protect the future of civilization on this planet, while extending our reach into the solar system."

The scheduled speakers will include:

• Ed Lu, B612 Foundation chairman and CEO, former space shuttle, Soyuz and space station astronaut
• Rusty Schweickart, chairman emeritus, Apollo 9 lunar module pilot
• Scott Hubbard, project architect from Stanford University, former director of NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.
• Harold Reitsema, mission director, former director of science mission development at Ball Aerospace

NASA and other teams of astronomers regularly use telescopes to monitor the sky for asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth. Experts have said that while giant asteroids could pose a global threat to our planet, even a larger space rock measuring about 460 feet wide (140 meters) could create widespread destruction at its impact point.

Last year, NASA scientists announced that they had successfully tracked about 90 percent of the largest asteroids in orbits that approach near Earth.

Data from NASA's infrared WISE space telescope allowed astronomers to estimate that there are about 981 asteroids the size of a mountain or larger on paths that come near Earth. About 911 of those asteroids have been tracked, researchers said.