{"id":18923,"date":"2017-06-13T23:06:09","date_gmt":"2017-06-13T15:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/b612s-new-asteroid-institute-enlists-uw-researchers-to-help-protect-our-planet\/"},"modified":"2017-06-13T23:06:09","modified_gmt":"2017-06-13T15:06:09","slug":"b612s-new-asteroid-institute-enlists-uw-researchers-to-help-protect-our-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/b612s-new-asteroid-institute-enlists-uw-researchers-to-help-protect-our-planet\/","title":{"rendered":"B612\u2019s new Asteroid Institute enlists UW researchers to help protect our planet"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_339372\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-339372\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-339372\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/170612-gravity-tractor-630x405.jpg\" alt=\"Gravity tractor\" width=\"630\" height=\"405\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/170612-gravity-tractor-630x405.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/170612-gravity-tractor-768x493.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/170612-gravity-tractor.jpg 950w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-339372\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">How do you divert a potentially threatening asteroid? One of the suggested scenarios is to station a \u201cgravity tractor\u201d near the asteroid so that the gravitational interaction gradually shifts the threatening object to a non-threatening trajectory. (FIAAA \/ B612 Foundation Illustration \/ Dan Durda)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The B612 Foundation is setting up an Asteroid Institute to study techniques for detecting and diverting near-Earth objects that may threaten our planet&nbsp;\u2013 and giving the University of Washington a leading role.<\/p>\n<p>The B612 Asteroid Institute\u2019s first two postdoctoral research fellows will be posted to UW\u2019s DIRAC Institute, where they\u2019ll help develop analytical tools to track asteroids and assess how much of an impact risk they pose.<\/p>\n<p>That task meshes with the 15-year-old B612 Foundation\u2019s mission of calling attention to the asteroid threat and the technologies that will be needed to spare us from the fate that the dinosaurs faced 65 million years ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn a sense, the Asteroid Institute reflects what we\u2019ve always been doing,\u201d B612 President Danica Remy told GeekWire during a visit to Seattle.<\/p>\n<p>The institute\u2019s establishment coincides with a reorganization of the nonprofit foundation\u2019s structure: Remy, who has served as B612\u2019s chief operating officer for the past five years, is taking over the lead role at the California-based foundation. Former NASA astronaut Ed Lu, the foundation\u2019s co-founder and longtime CEO, is shifting places to become the B612 Asteroid Institute\u2019s executive director.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was really important to have the administrative, managerial and fundraising side as well as the technical side,\u201d Lu explained. Now Lu will focus on the technical side from his home base in Silicon Valley, while keeping in touch with research partners in Seattle.<\/p>\n<p>The Asteroid Institute\u2019s first&nbsp;two postdoctoral researchers already have been selected, but Lu said he\u2019s holding off on identifying them until they start their three-year stint at UW.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"The Real Reality Show: Asteroid Day\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MAqUNMfQA4s?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>UW astronomer Andrew Connolly, director of the DIRAC Institute, said he expects the researchers\u2019 work to benefit asteroid science as well as planetary protection.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey tie in together really well,\u201d Connolly told GeekWire, \u201cbecause if you understand the physics of how asteroids evolve and how they interact with a variety of effects in the solar system, the outcome of that is that we have the ability to predict the potential for impact.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Chelyabinsk meteor explosion in the skies over Russia, which injured more than 1,000 people in 2013, served as a wakeup call about the potential destructive power of near-Earth objects. NASA is spending $50 million a year to identify and track near-Earth objects, but some analysts say that\u2019s a \u201cpittance\u201d compared to what\u2019s required to characterize the risk accurately.<\/p>\n<h4 class=\"callout clearfix\"><strong>Previously:<\/strong> What to do if an asteroid comes our way<\/h4>\n<p>In the past, B612 has tried to build up support for the Sentinel Space Telescope, a $450 million mission that would put an infrared observatory into an orbit optimized for detecting threatening asteroids. But Lu noted that other projects, such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, are already on track for asteroid detection.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re not pursuing Sentinel anymore because of LSST, and hopefully because of the eventual approval of NEOCam,\u201d Lu told GeekWire.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, he\u2019s focusing the institute on different priorities, starting with the Asteroid Decision Analysis Machine, or ADAM. Lu said ADAM would analyze the flood of data that\u2019s expected to flow from LSST and other next-generation space surveys. The current discovery rate for asteroids is roughly 30 per week, but that rate is expected to rise to thousands per week once LSST kicks in.<\/p>\n<p>Lu said UW\u2019s DIRAC Institute is well-suited to contribute to ADAM\u2019s development because LSST data analysis is one of its prime objectives. \u201cIt\u2019s important for young scientists to be close to the source of the data,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"GeekWire Summit: Science fiction and the future\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Hqlq0rzDj3Y?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Another priority is to develop small satellites that take advantage of a technology known as synthetic tracking. The technique could identify the track of a moving asteroid even when the asteroid\u2019s long-exposure image is too smeared out to see clearly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe data processing required to do that is fairly extreme,\u201d Lu said, \u201cbut given the progress we\u2019ve made with Moore\u2019s Law, it\u2019s doable today.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Simulations conducted by Caltech researchers suggest that synthetic tracking could detect asteroids as small as 25 feet across, which is less than half the width of the asteroid that caused the Chelyabinsk blast. A constellation of synthetic tracking satellites could be launched into space for a fraction of Sentinel\u2019s cost, Lu said.<\/p>\n<p>Remy said the B612 Asteroid Institute will be run as a virtual institute, analogous to NASA\u2019s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute, with a team of research collaborators from UW as well as other institutions. She said B612 will continue to work on other programs that focus on public education and advocacy, such as the annual Asteroid Day campaign&nbsp;that reaches its climax on June 30.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How do you divert a potentially threatening asteroid? One of the suggested scenarios is to station a \u201cgravity tractor\u201d near the asteroid so that the gravitational interaction gradually shifts the threatening object to a non-threatening trajectory. (FIAAA \/ B612 Foundation Illustration \/ Dan Durda) The B612 Foundation is setting up an Asteroid Institute to study [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1519,4505,5398],"class_list":["post-18923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-asteroids","tag-b612-foundation","tag-ed-lu"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18923"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18923\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}