B612 Foundation

B612 Foundation is a Mill Valley, California nonprofit founded in 2002 (named for the asteroid in The Little Prince) focused on planetary defense — detecting and characterizing potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) before they can threaten Earth. The foundation's most ambitious project was the Sentinel Space Telescope, a proposed infrared space telescope that would have cataloged far more near-Earth objects (NEOs) than ground-based programs, but struggled to raise the $450M needed. B612 pivoted to partner with existing telescope networks (including the Catalina Sky Survey and the AsteroidHunters citizen science platform using machine learning to identify asteroids in Subaru Telescope data). The foundation advocates for planetary defense funding and policy at NASA and internationally. B612's work became more mainstream after NASA's successful DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) impact demonstration in September 2022 showed asteroid deflection is technically feasible.