BOULDER, Colo. — For anyone who has seen the film Armageddon and worried that an asteroid might someday slam into Earth and obliterate humanity, a group of scientists is coming to the rescue.
Their mission is designed to map out all bodies in the inner solar system that might pose a threat to Earth in the next 100 years.
Ball Aerospace & Technologies and B612 Foundation, a nonprofit group of highly credentialed scientists, are teaming up to orchestrate the first privately funded deep-space mission. Called the Sentinel Mission, the project is intended to detect and map out 90 percent of all moving objects — as far as 90 million miles away — that are at least 153 yards wide.
“This mission is to protect the evolution of our species,” said John Troeltzsch, Sentinel’s program manager at Ball, a company in Boulder, Colo. “If the dinosaurs had been a little smarter, they might be here still.”
Despite the project’s relevance to humankind, one organization is responsible for raising the private funds over the next 10 years.
Ball signed a contract last week with B612 to begin development of the most-important and -complex aspect of the spacecraft — the infrared imaging sensors. The cameras must be sensitive enough to detect smaller, dangerous asteroids, but also durable enough to orbit the sun for 61/2 years, Troeltzsch said.
Although the project might sound like a far-fetched concept straight out of a sci-fi novel, its advocates and donors are heavyweights from the aerospace industry.
Sentinel was the brainchild of Harold Reitsema, formerly of Ball, and Ed Lu, a former NASA astronaut. Proponents have been pushing for the mission since about 2004, but with government budget cuts, NASA couldn’t afford to fund the mission.
Talking one day with B612’s leaders, Troeltzsch realized something significant: This mission had a different purpose from normal space missions, one that could facilitate diverse funding streams.
“(Ball is) a for-profit company, and we always think, ‘How are we going to make money on this?’ And then I just realized and said to Ed, ‘You’re not trying to make money; this is a philanthropic mission,’ ” Troeltzsch said. “This is for the whole world. Everybody has a stake.”
New business and funding models are growing more common in commercial space exploration.
“Once owned by civil space agencies and the military, the near-Earth space domain is already predominantly commercial,” said Janet Stevens, spokeswoman for Space Foundation.
Sentinel will be sent into a Venus-like orbit around the sun, about 170 million miles from Earth. The mission’s central command will be operated from the University of Colorado at Boulder and is targeted to launch in 2017 or 2018.
Once the objects are mapped, B612 will work on technology to deflect threatening asteroids.