Sentinel Mission: Finding the Asteroid Headed for Earth

Asteroids, which hit our planet at least twice each year, are the only natural disaster for which we have a technological solution. We are all living with the threat of a three-minute experience that could transform our lives and our planet forever. On Feb. 15, 2013, for example, an asteroid impact on Chelyabinsk, Russia, sent more than 1,700 people to seek medical attention, damaged more than over 7,200 buildings and cost the city more than $33 million dollars (1 billion rubles) in property damage.

Scientists have found 10,000 Near-Earth Objects, yet there are an estimated one million in our inner solar system, and the vast majority of the threatening ones are still undiscovered.  In this non-technical talk, Dr. Lu will describe the threat, and discuss the Sentinel Mission, an orbiting telescope to detect and track asteroids that cross Earth's orbit.

Speaker: Edward Tsang "Ed" Lu, former NASA Astronaut, CEO Sentinel Mission