As a non-governmental organization it has conducted two lines of related research to help detect NEOs that could one day strike the Earth, and find the technological means to divert their path to avoid such collisions.

Once stationed in a heliocentric orbit around the Sun similar to that of Venus, Sentinel's supercooled infrared detector would have helped identify dangerous asteroids and other NEOs that pose a risk of collision with Earth.

In the absence of substantive planetary defense provided by governments worldwide, B612 attempted a fundraising campaign to cover the Sentinel Mission, estimated at $450 million for 10 years of operation.

[3] The larger in size asteroids or other near-Earth objects (NEOs) are, the less frequently they impact the planet's atmosphere—large meteors seen in the skies are extremely rare, while medium-sized ones are less so, and much smaller ones are more commonplace.

In December 2009 Roscosmos Russian Federal Space Agency director Anatoly Perminov proposed a deflection mission to the 325-metre-wide (1,066 ft) asteroid 99942 Apophis, which at the time had been thought to pose a risk of collision with Earth.

[14][15] The Foundation evolved from an informal one-day workshop on asteroid deflection strategies during October 2001, organized by Dutch astrophysicist Piet Hut along with physicist and then-U.S. astronaut Ed Lu, presented at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

[1][17] Following the seminar's round-table discussions the workshop generally agreed that the vehicle of choice (needed to deflect an asteroid) would be powered by a low-thrust ion plasma engine.

[18] Nuclear explosives were seen as "too risky and unpredictable" for several reasons,[18] warranting the view that gently altering an asteroid's trajectory was the safest approach—but also a method requiring years of advance warning to successfully accomplish.

[35] Dr. Brown's analysis, "A 500-Kiloton Airburst Over Chelyabinsk and An Enhanced Hazard from Small Impactors", published in the journals Science and Nature,[10][36] was used to produce a short computer-animated video that was presented to the media at the Seattle Museum of Flight.

[4] The latest reassessment is based on worldwide infrasound signatures recorded under the auspices of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, which monitors the planet for nuclear explosions.

The 1908 event occurred in the remote, sparsely populated Tunguska area of Siberia, Russia, and is attributed to the likely airburst explosion of an asteroid or comet that destroyed some 80 million trees over 2,150 square kilometres (830 sq mi) of forests.

The higher frequency of these types of events is interpreted as meaning that "blind luck" has mainly prevented a catastrophic impact over an inhabited area that could kill millions, a point made near the video's end.

[48] By 2008, B612 had provided estimates on a 30 kilometers-wide corridor, called a "path of risk", that would extend across the Earth's surface if an impact were to occur, as part of its effort to develop viable deflection strategies.

[49] The calculated risk-path extended from Kazakhstan across southern Russia through Siberia, across the Pacific, then right between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, crossing northern Colombia and Venezuela, and ending in the Atlantic just before reaching Africa.

[10][60] At the time of the UN's policy adoption in New York City, Schweickart and four other ASE members, including B612 head Ed Lu and strategic advisers Dumitru Prunariu and Tom Jones participated in a public forum moderated by Neil deGrasse Tyson not far from the United Nations Headquarters.

[24] Data gathered by Sentinel would be provided through existing scientific data-sharing networks that include NASA and academic institutions such as the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

[78] Edward Tsang "Ed" Lu (Chinese: 盧傑; pinyin: Lú Jié; born July 1, 1963) is a co-founder and the chief executive officer of the B612 Foundation, and as well, a U.S. physicist and a former NASA astronaut.

He also earned the American Astronomical Society's 2005 Randolph Lovelace II Award for his management of all Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA robotic science spacecraft missions.

Prior to joining NASA, Hubbard led a small start-up high technology company in the San Francisco Bay Area and was a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Ball Aerospace is the Sentinel's prime contractor responsible for its design and integration, to be later launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket into a Venus-trailing heliocentric orbit around the Sun.

[98] Troeltzsch's program management abilities include experience with spacecraft systems engineering and software integration through all phases of space telescope projects, from contract definition through assembly, launch and on-station operational start up.

[102] Liddle also held the chair of the board of trustees for the Santa Fe Institute, a nonprofit theoretical research center, from 1994 to 1999,[103] and served on the U.S.'s DARPA Information, Science and Technology Committee.

Prior to joining NASA, Schweickart was a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Experimental Astronomy Laboratory, where he researched upper atmospheric physics and became an expert in star tracking and the stabilization of stellar images, a crucial requirement for space navigation.

[111] Dr. Daniel David "Dan" Durda (b. October 26, 1965, Detroit, Michigan),[112] is a B612 board member and "a principal scientist in the Department of Space Studies of the Southwest Research Institute's (SwRI) Boulder Colorado.

Hut's specialization is in "stellar and planetary dynamics; many of his more than two hundred articles are written in collaboration with colleagues from different fields, ranging from particle physics, geophysics and paleontology to computer science, cognitive psychology and philosophy.

He has held honors, functions, fellowships and memberships in almost 150 different professional organizations, universities and conferences, and published over 225 papers and articles in scientific journals and symposiums, including his first in 1976 on "The Two-Body problem with a Decreasing Gravitational Constant".

According to Rusty Schweickart, the gravitational tractor method also has a controversial aspect because during the process of changing an asteroid's trajectory, the point on Earth where it would most likely hit would slowly be shifted temporarily across the face of the planet.

[128] An early NASA analysis of deflection alternatives in 2007, stated: "'Slow push' mitigation techniques are the most expensive, have the lowest level of technical readiness, and their ability to both travel to and divert a threatening NEO would be limited unless mission durations of many years to decades are possible.

[127] AIDA's new target, a component of binary asteroid 65803 Didymos, will be impacted at a velocity of 22,530 km/h (14,000 mph)[133][134][135] A NASA analysis of deflection alternatives, conducted in 2007, stated: "Non-nuclear kinetic impactors are the most mature approach and could be used in some deflection/mitigation scenarios, especially for NEOs that consist of a single small, solid body.

[138][139] That experience later contributed, in 1943, to his literary creation of Asteroid B-612 in his philosophical fable of a little prince fallen to Earth,[139] with the home planetoid's name having been adapted from one of the mail planes Saint-Exupéry once flew, bearing the registration marking A-612.