Telescope to Give Early Warning on Deadly Asteroids

It's not exactly space sharks with laser beams, but it could be the first step.

A nonprofit foundation formed a decade ago has announced its intention to build a telescope to detect Earth-targeted asteroids. The head of the foundation is Rusty Schweickart, who should know a thing or two about things outside Earth's orbit. The Apollo 9 astronaut is chairman emeritus of the foundation, which aims to raise in the hundreds of millions of dollars in order to fund the telescope project, to be titled Sentinel. The chairman and CEO of B612 is former shuttle astronaut Ed Lu, who septa long periods of time abroad the International Space Station.

After the success of SpaceX, private groups might find it a bit easier to raise money and find success in space. B612 is pointedly not asking for NASA for help, although it the foundation says it will work with a face familiar to NASA: Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., which worked on teams that produced both the Kepler and the Spitzer telescopes.

The telescope would be an infrared one and would orbit the Sun, on a trajectory similar to the planet Venus. Launch date is planned to be in 2017, and the minimum lifespan for the telescope is between five and six years. During that time, scientists hope to identify hundreds of thousands of uncharted asteroids, the idea being that we will have a long time to mobilize Bruce Willis or whoever needs to be involved to deal with any potential threat.

The B612 Foundation takes its name from the Earth name for the home of The Little Prince. In the novel by Antoine de Saint Exupery, the Prince says he comes from Asteroid 325 but that Earth people call it B-612.