Partnerships Making a Difference: B612

Barringer Meteor Crater B612 Partnership to support Planetary Defense Efforts

We have had a relationship with the B612 Foundation since early in its history. For many years the Foundation has been bringing colleagues, scientists and supporters to the crater for a first-hand look at what even a small asteroid can do to the earth.

“The B612 Foundation is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization dedicated to planetary defense from asteroids. Founded in 2002, in our first decade, we worked to find technical solutions for asteroid deflection, assuming the necessary first step of discovering and tracking threatening asteroids would be managed by the government. Through advocacy efforts and educational outreach, the issue of potentially threatening asteroids was communicated to scientists, governments and the general public.  Our message was that once asteroids are detected, deflecting asteroids is a solvable technical problem, as long as there is adequate early warning (preferably decades of advance notice). In recent years they have developed the technology to identify many, many more asteroids of a size that would threaten the earth.” -B612 Foundation