B612 Foundation

B612 Foundation

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
Tax ID no.	54-2078469
Registration no.	C2467899
Purpose	Planetary defense
Location	Mill Valley, California, USA
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.