Meteor and asteroid events give new focus for our vital Sentinel telescope | Rusty Schweickart

A Russian meteorite and an asteroid close to losing graphically highlight the risks to the planet Earth. But we are not powerless

Spaceship Earth just took two shots across the bow of heaven, first of all, a meteor hit Russia, Chelyabinsk region fragments showers and apparently injured hundreds of people and other hand, the asteroid 2012 DA14 graze on February 15. Traditionally, a torpedo fired across the bow as a warning to change his behavior - and this coincidence of events should be a warning to humanity that meteors are not always Benin as "shooting stars" and the asteroid Next could not miss! Are we, the crew of the SS Newfoundland heed this warning?

can see the asteroid 2012 DA14 (DA14 or, for short), who have lost their land for 17,000 miles in two ways. DA14 can be considered as one of the nearly 10,000 near-Earth asteroids have been discovered over the last 15 years that pass close to the Earth, threatening to impact. However, as we have seen these asteroids and monitor current, we can predict future impacts. Fortunately, none of them have so far found no substantial threat of impact.

But Earth

beaten by the relatively small size of the asteroid DA14 approximately once every 300 years on average. And "small" is far, far from being negligible. The DA14-like asteroid colliding with Earth in 1908 did in a remote region of Siberia, where the explosion (equivalent to about 250 Hiroshima nuclear bombs exploding at the same time) has destroyed more than 800 square miles of countryside. This disaster zone superimposed on any city in the world, and would have wiped out all the inhabitants of the earth's surface. I refer, as a graphic reminder of the power of these explosions, a post-facto image Hiroshima bombs easily found online.

The second way is to see DA14 realize that until a year ago, was one of about 1 million asteroids of similar size near the Earth, we know there are , statistically, but we have not seen yet. Therefore, until we find them in our telescopes, we are like sitting ducks in a shooting gallery with nothing but the chance to avoid a disaster. Unfortunately, ground-based telescopes have been used to discover and track these objects, in practice reached its limits to find the vast majority of these cosmic torpedoes.

Why should we care to find if there is nothing you can do about it? Because, unbeknownst to most people is that if we have enough early warning, our current space technology is advanced enough to deflect asteroids. For small impacts, including a last-minute warning of several days, could allow a local exhaust and save lives.

difference, however, usually require decades of warning. Fortunately, because of the relatively pure dynamics of space, providing an asteroid impact 100 years in advance is possible once its orbit is well known. The prerequisite is to find them.

• over the past 15 years, NASA has, fortunately, found more than 95% of the largest asteroids that cross the Earth's orbit and that the entire planet would affect the impact . Unfortunately, due to limitations of telescopes, we found less than 1% of their cousins ??DA14-like "only" able to scan a metropolitan area. 99% of work to do
There are good reasons for hope, however. Several high-level groups of experts in the past five years has been recommended that a infrared space telescope in orbit around Venus around the Sun in the form to find most asteroids threatening Earth small. Such a telescope to look outside the Earth's orbit during its journey around the sun every 230 days or more, the detection and monitoring of its 6.5 years of operation, 99% of missing asteroids potentially the impact of the Earth.

B612 Foundation (named after the asteroid home of the "Prince" in the classic children's story by Antoine de Saint-Exup?ry), a U.S. Non-Profit of ancient astronauts, scientists , engineers and supporters, rose precisely this mission. The Sentinel telescope is scheduled for launch in 2018, and in its first month of operation alone, discover more new programs near-Earth asteroids found today in 15 years.

the end of their life, Sentinel found more than 90% of asteroids that could destroy entire regions of the planet impact (those over 350 meters in diameter) and more 50% of currently unknown DA14-like asteroids near Earth.

B612 Foundation undertook this project as an initiative Sentinel NGOs, something like a growing number of private space companies behind these recent years. The foundation, however, is not the realization of this project for profit, we are a non-profit organization. Our motivation is strictly to ensure the survival of life on Earth - everything. And while NASA is cooperating with us to provide secure communication and analytical services, we are very happy, as a private company, to welcome the participation of
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