Foundation History

The B612 project grew out of a one-day workshop on deflecting asteroids, organized by Piet Hut and Ed Lu at NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, on October 20, 2001.  This meeting was rather informal, primarily a round-table discussion between twenty experts in areas related to asteroids and to new propulsion and power technologies who wanted to actually do something about deflecting near Earth asteroids (NEAs).

There was a consensus that low-thrust methods would likely be the mode of choice for trying to change the orbit of an asteroid on a collision course with the Earth.  The use of nuclear explosions was seen as too risky and unpredictable to be deemed safe. A variety of methods was discussed, one of the most promising of which was to land a plasma engine, powered by a nuclear reactor, on an asteroid.  By using the engine as a tugboat to push the asteroid its orbit could be changed enough to avoid an impact with the Earth.

The discussion focused on a number of technical details, such as how to efficiently push a spinning asteroid, the question of how to anchor the engine in the low-gravity environment of the asteroid, problems related to the possible presence of dust, and so on.  But the main outcome of the meeting was the fact that among the twenty experts a plasma powered tugboat looked like the best bet for an early demonstration mission.  Other technologies would have to be evaluated, but the nuclear electric/plasma propulsion combination with a direct docking would be the most generally useful concept for all asteroid types.  The development of this technology would provide the capability to accomplish many other deep space missions as well.

With no showstoppers present, the meeting ended with an upbeat feeling that we are technologically ready to plan and execute such a demonstration mission. A change of just 1 or 2 cm/sec in the orbital velocity of an asteroid would be easy to measure from the Earth using radar, and would be enough to avoid a collision with the Earth if it were carried out a number of years in advance.

A good trial project would be to select a representative NEA (one not headed toward Earth) and change its orbit slightly as a demonstration of the capability.  With the consensus of the group that an organization to carry out this program would be needed, Clark Chapman, Piet Hut, Ed Lu, and Rusty Schweickart took up the challenge.  After some further detailed discussions, they established the B612 Foundation on October 7, 2002.

Here is a list of the participants of the October 2001 workshop:

William Bottke        Southwest Research Institute
Dennis Byrnes        NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Franklin Chang       NASA/Johnson Space Center
Clark Chapman      Southwest Research Institute
Tony Dobrovolskis  NASA/Ames Research Center
Dan Durda              Southwest Research Institute
John Grunsfeld       NASA/Johnson Space Center
Piet Hut                   Institute for Advanced Studies
Don Korycansky     University of California Santa Cruz
Stanley Love           NASA/Johnson Space Center
Ed Lu                      NASA/Johnson Space Center
Andrew Petro          NASA/Johnson Space Center
Dan Mazanek          NASA/Ames Research Center
Bill Merline              Southwest Research Institute
David Morrison        NASA/Ames Research Center
David Poston           Los Alamos National Laboratory
Dan Scheeres          University of Michigan
Rusty Schweickart   Independent
Jared Squire             NASA/Johnson Space Center
Bobby Williams        NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory