Sentinel Space Telescope
Artist rendering of the Sentinel Space Telescope
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| Mission type | Space Telescope |
|---|---|
| Operator | B612 Foundation |
| Website | SentinelMission.org |
| Mission duration | ≤10 years (planned) |
| Spacecraft properties | |
| Manufacturer | Ball Aerospace |
| Launch mass | 1,500 kg (3,300 lb) |
| Start of mission | |
| Launch date | 2019 (proposed) |
| Rocket | Falcon 9 |
| Orbital parameters | |
| Reference system | Heliocentric |
| Main | |
| Wavelengths | 7-15 μm |
| Instruments | |
| IRAC IRS |
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The Sentinel Space Telescope is a space observatory currently being designed and built for the B612 Foundation, and under development by Ball Aerospace & Technologies. The B612 Foundation is dedicated to protecting the Earth from dangerous asteroid strikes and Sentinel is the Foundation's first spacecraft to tangibly address that mission.
The space telescope is being designed to locate 90 % of the asteroids greater than 140 metres (460 ft) in diameter that exist in near-Earth orbits. The telescope will orbit the sun in a Venus-like orbit (i.e. between Earth and the Sun), and is being designed to catalog 90 % of the large asteroids in Earth’s region of the solar system. The craft will be placed in an orbit similar to that of Venus, allowing it to clearly view the night half of the sky every 20 days, and picking out objects that are currently often difficult, if not impossible, to see in advance from Earth." Sentinel will have an operational mission life of from six and a half to ten years.
The B612 project grew out of a one-day workshop on asteroid deflection organized by Piet Hut and Ed Lu at NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas on October 20, 2001. Participants Rusty Schweickart, Clark Chapman, Piet Hut, and Ed Lu established the B612 Foundation on October 7, 2002. The Foundation originally planned to launch Sentinel by December 2016 and to begin data retrieval no later than 6 months after successful positioning. In April 2013, the plan had moved out to launching on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in 2018, following preliminary design review in 2014, and critical design review in 2015.
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