170-525: The B612 Foundation is a private nonprofit foundation headquartered in Mill Valley, California , United States, dedicated to planetary science and planetary defense against asteroids and other near-Earth object (NEO) impacts . It is led mainly by scientists, former astronauts and engineers from the Institute for Advanced Study , Southwest Research Institute , Stanford University , NASA and
340-612: A Space Missions Planning Advisory Group to provide oversight on proposed asteroid deflection missions. In 2012, the foundation announced it would design and build a privately financed asteroid-finding space observatory , the Sentinel Space Telescope , to be launched in 2017–2018. 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
510-523: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, to be placed into a Venus -trailing Heliocentric orbit around the Sun. Orbiting between the Sun and Earth, the Sun's rays would always be behind the telescope's lens and thus never inhibit the space observatory 's ability to detect asteroids or other near-Earth objects (NEOs). From the vantage of its inner-solar system orbit around the Sun, Sentinel would be able to "pick up objects that are currently difficult, if not impossible, to see in advance from Earth", such as occurred with
680-526: A carbonaceous chondrite . Typical carbonaceous chondrite substance tends to be dissolved with water rather quickly unless it is frozen. Christopher Chyba and others have proposed a process whereby a stony asteroid could have exhibited the Tunguska impactor's behaviour. Their models show that when the forces opposing a body's descent become greater than the cohesive force holding it together, it blows apart, releasing nearly all its energy at once. The result
850-420: A meteor air burst , the atmospheric explosion of a stony asteroid about 50–60 metres (160–200 feet) wide. The asteroid approached from the east-south-east, probably with a relatively high speed of about 27 km/s (60,000 mph) (~ Ma 80). Though the incident is classified as an impact event , the object is thought to have exploded at an altitude of 5 to 10 kilometres (3 to 6 miles) rather than hitting
1020-480: A 10-metre (33 ft) fragment survived the explosion and struck the ground. Lake Cheko is a small bowl-shaped lake about 8 km (5.0 mi) north-northwest of the hypocentre. The hypothesis has been disputed by other impact crater specialists. A 1961 investigation had dismissed a modern origin of Lake Cheko, saying that the presence of metres-thick silt deposits on the lake bed suggests an age of at least 5,000 years, but more recent research suggests that only
1190-407: A body composed of cometary material, travelling through the atmosphere along such a shallow trajectory, ought to have disintegrated, whereas the Tunguska body apparently remained intact into the lower atmosphere. Sekanina also argued that the evidence pointed to a dense rocky object, probably of asteroidal origin. This hypothesis was further boosted in 2001, when Farinella , Foschini, et al. released
1360-497: A boulder found at the event site, known as John's stone, is a remnant of the meteorite, but oxygen isotope analysis of the quartzite suggests that it is of hydrothermal origin, and probably related to Permian-Triassic Siberian Traps magmatism. In 2013, a team of researchers published the results of an analysis of micro-samples from a peat bog near the centre of the affected area, which show fragments that may be of extraterrestrial origin. The leading scientific explanation for
1530-586: A brand new observatory. Schweickart stated that about "80% of what we're dealing with in Sentinel is Kepler , 15% Spitzer , 5% new, higher-performance infrared sensors ", thus concentrating its R&D funds on the critical area of cryogenically-cooled image sensor technology, producing what it terms will be the most sensitive type of asteroid-finding telescope ever built. Data gathered by Sentinel would be provided through existing scientific data-sharing networks that include NASA and academic institutions such as
1700-500: A certain collision with local destruction. On 30 June 1908 N.S. (cited as 17 June 1908 O.S. before the implementation of the Soviet calendar in 1918), at around 7:17 AM local time, Evenki natives and Russian settlers in the hills northwest of Lake Baikal observed a bluish light, nearly as bright as the Sun , moving across the sky and leaving a thin trail. Closer to the horizon, there
1870-436: A crater left by the impact of a fragment of a cosmic body. Sediment cores from the lake's bottom were studied to support or reject this hypothesis. A 175-centimetre-long (69 in) core, collected near the center of the lake, consists of an upper c. 1-metre-thick (39 in) sequence of lacustrine deposits overlaying coarser chaotic material. Pb and Cs indicate that the transition from lower to upper sequence occurred close to
SECTION 10
#17327728985482040-424: A delegate structure to allow for the representation of groups or corporations as members. Alternatively, it may be a non-membership organization and the board of directors may elect its own successors. The two major types of nonprofit organization are membership and board-only. A membership organization elects the board and has regular meetings and the power to amend the bylaws. A board-only organization typically has
2210-402: A different place, there was another flash, and loud thunder came. This was the third thunder strike. Wind came again, knocked us off our feet, struck the fallen trees. We looked at the fallen trees, watched the tree tops get snapped off, watched the fires. Suddenly Chekaren yelled "Look up" and pointed with his hand. I looked there and saw another flash, and it made another thunder. But the noise
2380-554: A fiscally viable entity. Nonprofits have the responsibility of focusing on being professional and financially responsible, replacing self-interest and profit motive with mission motive. Though nonprofits are managed differently from for-profit businesses, they have felt pressure to be more businesslike. To combat private and public business growth in the public service industry, nonprofits have modeled their business management and mission, shifting their reason of existing to establish sustainability and growth. Setting effective missions
2550-484: A fraction of a second as nearly 160 million tonnes of limestone and bedrock were uplifted, creating its crater rim on formerly flat terrain. The asteroid that produced the Barringer Crater was only about 46 metres (151 ft) in size; however it impacted the ground at a velocity of 12.8 km/s (29,000 mph) and struck with an impact energy of 10 megatonnes of TNT (42 PJ)—about 625 times greater than
2720-449: A giant billow of black smoke, and a loud knocking (not thunder) was heard as if large stones were falling, or artillery was fired. All buildings shook. At the same time the cloud began emitting flames of uncertain shapes. All villagers were stricken with panic and took to the streets, women cried, thinking it was the end of the world. The author of these lines was meantime in the forest about 6 versts [6.4 km] north of Kirensk and heard to
2890-510: A gigantic spread-eagled butterfly with a "wingspan" of 70 km (43 mi) and a "body length" of 55 km (34 mi). Upon closer examination, Kulik found holes that he erroneously concluded were meteorite holes; he did not have the means at that time to excavate the holes. During the next 10 years, there were three more expeditions to the area. Kulik found several dozen little "pothole" bogs, each 10 to 50 metres (33 to 164 feet) in diameter, that he thought might be meteoric craters. After
3060-609: A graduate degree in solid state and semiconductor physics at the University of California at Berkeley . Dr. Marc W. Buie (b. 1958) is the foundation's Sentinel Mission Scientist, and as well a U.S. astronomer at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona . Buie received his B.Sc. in physics from Louisiana State University in 1980 and earned his Ph.D. in Planetary Science from the University of Arizona in 1984. He
3230-402: A huge explosion. The destruction would have to have been so complete that no remnants of substantial size survived, and the material scattered into the upper atmosphere during the explosion would have caused the skyglows. Models published in 1993 suggested that the stony body would have been about 60 metres (200 ft) across, with physical properties somewhere between an ordinary chondrite and
3400-480: A hut by the river with my brother Chekaren. We were sleeping. Suddenly we both woke up at the same time. Somebody shoved us. We heard whistling and felt strong wind. Chekaren said "Can you hear all those birds flying overhead?" We were both in the hut, couldn't see what was going on outside. Suddenly, I got shoved again, this time so hard I fell into the fire. I got scared. Chekaren got scared too. We started crying out for father, mother, brother, but no one answered. There
3570-543: A joint US-European team was consistent with an iron meteorite. The February 2013 Chelyabinsk bolide event provided ample data for scientists to create new models for the Tunguska event. Researchers used data from both Tunguska and Chelyabinsk to perform a statistical study of over 50 million combinations of bolide and entry properties that could produce Tunguska-scale damage when breaking apart or exploding at similar altitudes. Some models focused on combinations of properties which created scenarios with similar effects to
SECTION 20
#17327728985483740-650: A joint appointment with the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics at the University of Colorado . Lu performed postdoctoral fellow work at the Institute for Astronomy in Honolulu, Hawaii from 1992 until 1995 before being selected for NASA's Astronaut Corps in 1994. Lu developed a number of new theoretical advances, which have provided for the first time a basic understanding of the underlying physics of solar flares . Besides his work on solar flares he has published journal articles and scientific papers on
3910-606: A kiloton of TNT explosive force. The study suggested that "city-killer" type impact events similar to the Tunguska event of 1908 actually occur on average about once a century instead of every thousand years, as was once previously believed. 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
4080-576: A laborious exercise in draining one of these bogs (the so-called "Suslov's crater", 32 m [105 ft] in diameter), he found an old tree stump on the bottom, ruling out the possibility that it was a meteoric crater. In 1938, Kulik arranged for an aerial photographic survey of the area covering the central part of the leveled forest (250 square kilometres [97 sq mi]). The original negatives of these aerial photographs (1,500 negatives, each 18 by 18 centimetres [7.1 by 7.1 inches]) were burned in 1975 by order of Yevgeny Krinov , then Chairman of
4250-452: A lack of ownership, priority and funding that governments have assigned to asteroid threats, also stating on a different occasion "We're the only ones taking it seriously." According to another B612 board member, Rusty Schweickart, "The good news is, you can prevent it—not just get ready for it! The bad news is, it's hard to get anybody to pay attention to it when there are potholes in the road." After providing earlier Congressional testimony on
4420-641: A large dynamic catalog of such objects that would help identify dangerous Earth-impactors, deemed a necessary precursor to mounting any asteroid deflection mission. In March and April 2013, several weeks after the Chelyabinsk meteor explosion injured some 1,500 people, the U.S. Congress held hearings for "...the Risks, Impacts and Solutions for Space Threats". They received testimony from B612 head Ed Lu (see video at right), as well as Dr. Donald K. Yeomans, head of NASA's NEO Program Office, Dr. Michael A'Hearn of
4590-552: A legislated mandate for planetary protection , not being permitted to request it. Feeling it would be imprudent to continue waiting for substantive government or United Nations action, B612 began a fundraising campaign in 2012 to cover the approximate US$ 450 million cost for the development, launch and operations of an asteroid-finding space telescope , to be called Sentinel , with a goal of raising $ 30 to $ 40 million per year. The space observatory 's objective would be to accurately survey NEOs from an orbit similar to that Venus, creating
4760-471: A low-stress work environment that the employee can associate him or herself positively with. Other incentives that should be implemented are generous vacation allowances or flexible work hours. When selecting a domain name , NPOs often use one of the following: .org , the country code top-level domain of their respective country, or the .edu top-level domain (TLD), to differentiate themselves from more commercial entities, which typically use .com . In
4930-587: A mass of 1,500 kilograms (3,300 lb) and would orbit the Sun at a distance of 0.6 to 0.8 astronomical units (90,000,000 to 120,000,000 km; 56,000,000 to 74,000,000 mi) approximately the same orbital distance as Venus , employing infrared astronomy to identify asteroids against the cold of outer space. Sentinel would scan in the 7- to 15-micron wavelength band across a 5.5 by 2-degree field of view. Its sensor array would consist of 16 detectors with coverage scanning "a 200-degree, full-angle field of regard". B612, working in partnership with Ball Aerospace,
5100-550: A maximum activity around 28–29 June. The Tunguska event coincided with that shower's peak activity, the Tunguska object's approximate trajectory is consistent with what would be expected from a fragment of Comet Encke, and a hypothetical risk corridor has now been calculated demonstrating that if the impactor had arrived a few minutes earlier it would have exploded over the US or Canada. It is now known that bodies of this kind explode at frequent intervals tens to hundreds of kilometres above
5270-420: A metre or so of the sediment layer on the lake bed is "normal lacustrine sedimentation", a depth consistent with an age of about 100 years. Acoustic-echo soundings of the lake floor support the hypothesis that the Tunguska event formed the lake. The soundings revealed a conical shape for the lake bed, which is consistent with an impact crater. Magnetic readings indicate a possible metre-sized chunk of rock below
B612 Foundation - Misplaced Pages Continue
5440-516: A months-long decrease in atmospheric transparency consistent with an increase in suspended dust particles. Though the region of Siberia in which the explosion occurred was very sparsely populated in 1908, there are accounts of the event from eyewitnesses who were in the surrounding area at the time, and regional newspapers reported the event shortly after it occurred. According to the testimony of S. Semenov, as recorded by Russian mineralogist Leonid Kulik 's expedition in 1930: At breakfast time I
5610-457: A nonprofit entity without having tax-exempt status. Key aspects of nonprofits are accountability, integrity, trustworthiness, honesty, and openness to every person who has invested time, money, and faith into the organisation. Nonprofit organizations are accountable to the donors, founders, volunteers, program recipients, and the public community. Theoretically, for a nonprofit that seeks to finance its operations through donations, public confidence
5780-464: A number of technical obstacles. Nuclear explosives were seen as "too risky and unpredictable" for several reasons, 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. The October 2001 asteroid deflection workshop participants created the "B612 Project" to further their research. Schweickart, along with Drs. Hut, Lu and Chapman, then formed
5950-414: A possible candidate for the Tunguska object's parent body as the asteroid made a close approach of 0.06945 AU (27 LD ) from Earth on 27 June 1908, three days before the Tunguska impact. The team suspected that 2005 NB 56 's orbit likely fits with the Tunguska object's modelled orbit, even with the effects of weak non-gravitational forces. In 2013, analysis of fragments from the Tunguska site by
6120-676: A public forum moderated by Neil deGrasse Tyson not far from the United Nations Headquarters . The panel urged the global community to adopt further important steps for planetary defense against NEO impacts. Their recommendations included: The Sentinel Mission program was the cornerstone of the B612 Foundation's earlier efforts, with its preliminary design and system architecture level reviews planned for 2014, and its critical design review to be conducted in 2015. The infrared telescope would be launched atop
6290-425: A railway upon which dozens of trains are travelling at the same time. Afterward, for 5 to 6 minutes an exact likeness of artillery fire was heard: 50 to 60 salvoes in short, equal intervals, which got progressively weaker. After 1.5–2 minutes after one of the "barrages" six more thumps were heard, like cannon firing, but individual, loud and accompanied by tremors. The sky, at the first sight, appeared to be clear. There
6460-454: A range of assumptions about the object's composition as if it was made of iron, rock, or ice. The model that most closely matched the observed event was an iron asteroid up to 200 metres in diameter, travelling at 11.2 km per second, that glanced off the Earth's atmosphere and returned into solar orbit. The explosion's effect on the trees near the explosion's hypocentre was similar to
6630-529: 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. Fundraising was unsuccessful, and the program was cancelled in 2017, with the Foundation pursuing a constellation of smaller satellites instead. The B612 Foundation
6800-697: A self-selected board and a membership whose powers are limited to those delegated to it by the board. A board-only organization's bylaws may even state that the organization does not have any membership, although the organization's literature may refer to its donors or service recipients as 'members'; examples of such organizations are FairVote and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws . The Model Nonprofit Corporation Act imposes many complexities and requirements on membership decision-making. Accordingly, many organizations, such as
6970-434: A single Air Force Next-Generation Bomber . The $ 450 million cost estimate is composed of $ 250 million to create Sentinel, plus another $ 200 million for 10 years of operations. In explaining the Foundation's bypassing of possible governmental grants for such a mission, Dr. Lu stated their public fundraising appeal is being driven by "[t]he tragedy of the commons: When it's everybody's problem, it's nobody's problem", referring to
B612 Foundation - Misplaced Pages Continue
7140-611: A six-hour spacewalk outside the station performing construction work. During his three missions he logged a total of 206 days in space. His education includes an electrical engineering degree from Cornell University , and a Ph.D. in applied physics from Stanford University . Lu became a specialist in solar physics and astrophysics as a visiting scientist at the High Altitude Observatory based in Boulder, Colorado, from 1989 until 1992. In his final year, he held
7310-409: A stony mantle that allowed it to penetrate the atmosphere. The chief difficulty in the asteroid hypothesis is that a stony object should have produced a large crater where it struck the ground, but no such crater has been found. It has been hypothesised that the asteroid's passage through the atmosphere caused pressures and temperatures to build up to a point where the asteroid abruptly disintegrated in
7480-471: A strong vision of how to operate the project, try to retain control of the organization, even as new employees or volunteers want to expand the project's scope or change policy. Resource mismanagement is a particular problem with NPOs because the employees are not accountable to anyone who has a direct stake in the organization. For example, an employee may start a new program without disclosing its complete liabilities. The employee may be rewarded for improving
7650-402: A study calculating the probabilities based on orbital modelling extracted from the atmospheric trajectories of the Tunguska object. They concluded with a probability of 83% that the object moved on an asteroidal path originating from the asteroid belt , rather than on a cometary one (probability of 17%). Proponents of the comet hypothesis have suggested that the object was an extinct comet with
7820-533: A wide diversity of structures and purposes. For legal classification, there are, nevertheless, some elements of importance: Some of the above must be (in most jurisdictions in the US at least) expressed in the organization's charter of establishment or constitution. Others may be provided by the supervising authority at each particular jurisdiction. While affiliations will not affect a legal status, they may be taken into consideration by legal proceedings as an indication of purpose. Most countries have laws that regulate
7990-571: A wide range of topics including cosmology , solar oscillations , statistical mechanics , plasma physics , near-Earth asteroids , and is also a co-inventor of the gravitational tractor concept of asteroid deflection . In 2007 Lu retired from NASA to become the Program Manager on Google 's Advanced Projects Team , and also worked with Liquid Robotics as its Chief of Innovative Applications, and at Hover Inc. as its chief technology officer . While still at NASA during 2002 Lu co-founded
8160-423: A zone, roughly 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) across, where the trees were scorched and devoid of branches, but still standing upright. Trees farther from the centre had been partly scorched and knocked down away from the centre, creating a large radial pattern of downed trees. In the 1960s, it was established that the zone of levelled forest occupied an area of 2,150 km (830 sq mi), its shape resembling
8330-399: Is a factor in the amount of money that a nonprofit organization is able to raise. Supposedly, the more a nonprofit focuses on their mission, the more public confidence they will gain. This will result in more money for the organization. The activities a nonprofit is partaking in can help build the public's confidence in nonprofits, as well as how ethical the standards and practices are. There
8500-434: Is a greater risk of large casualties arising from a mid-sized asteroid impact. However, as of the early 2010s, only about a half of one per cent of Tunguska-type NEOs had been located by astronomers using ground-based telescope surveys. The need for an asteroid detection program has been compared to the need for monsoon, typhoon, and hurricane preparedness. As the B612 Foundation and other organizations have publicly noted, of
8670-461: Is a key for the successful management of nonprofit organizations. There are three important conditions for effective mission: opportunity, competence, and commitment. One way of managing the sustainability of nonprofit organizations is to establish strong relations with donor groups. This requires a donor marketing strategy, something many nonprofits lack. Nonprofit organizations provide public goods that are undersupplied by government. NPOs have
SECTION 50
#17327728985488840-813: Is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, as opposed to an entity that operates as a business aiming to generate a profit for its owners. A nonprofit organization is subject to the non-distribution constraint: any revenues that exceed expenses must be committed to the organization's purpose, not taken by private parties. Depending on the local laws, charities are regularly organized as non-profits. A host of organizations may be nonprofit, including some political organizations, schools, hospitals, business associations, churches, foundations, social clubs, and consumer cooperatives. Nonprofit entities may seek approval from governments to be tax-exempt , and some may also qualify to receive tax-deductible contributions, but an entity may incorporate as
9010-529: Is also one of the co-discoverers of Pluto's new moons, Nix and Hydra (Pluto II and Pluto III) discovered in 2005. Buie has worked with the Deep Ecliptic Survey team who have been responsible for the discovery of over a thousand such distant objects. He also studies the Kuiper Belt and transitional objects such as 2060 Chiron and 5145 Pholus , as well as the occasional comets as with
9180-439: Is an important distinction in the US between non-profit and not-for-profit organizations (NFPOs); while an NFPO does not profit its owners, and money goes into running the organization, it is not required to operate for the public good. An example is a club, whose purpose is its members' enjoyment. Other examples of NFPOs include: credit unions, sports clubs, and advocacy groups. Nonprofit organizations provide services to
9350-414: Is an important distinction in the US between non-profit and not-for-profit organizations (NFPOs); while an NFPO does not profit its owners, and money goes into running the organization, it is not required to operate for the public good. An example is a sports club, whose purpose is its members' enjoyment. The names used and precise regulations vary from one jurisdiction to another. According to
9520-557: Is concerned. In many countries, nonprofits may apply for tax-exempt status, so that the organization itself may be exempt from income tax and other taxes. In the United States, to be exempt from federal income taxes, the organization must meet the requirements set forth in the Internal Revenue Code (IRC). Granting nonprofit status is done by the state, while granting tax-exempt designation (such as IRC 501(c) )
9690-453: Is granted by the federal government via the IRS. This means that not all nonprofits are eligible to be tax-exempt. For example, employees of non-profit organizations pay taxes from their salaries, which they receive according to the laws of the country. NPOs use the model of a double bottom line in that furthering their cause is more important than making a profit, though both are needed to ensure
9860-427: 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. During the first decade of the 2000s, there were serious concerns the 325 metres (1,066 ft) wide asteroid 99942 Apophis posed a risk of impacting Earth in 2036. Preliminary, incomplete data by astronomers using ground-based sky surveys resulted in
10030-423: Is named for the asteroid home of the eponymous hero of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 's 1943 book The Little Prince . When an asteroid enters the planet's atmosphere it becomes known as a ' meteor '; those that survive and fall to the Earth's surface are then called ' meteorites '. While basketball-sized meteors occur almost daily, and compact car-sized ones about yearly, they usually burn up or explode high above
10200-530: Is no crater, with damage distributed over a fairly wide radius, and all the damage resulting from the thermal energy the blast releases. During the 1990s, Italian researchers, coordinated by the physicist Giuseppe Longo from the University of Bologna , extracted resin from the core of the trees in the area of impact to examine trapped particles that were present during the 1908 event. They found high levels of material commonly found in rocky asteroids and rarely found in comets. Kelly et al. (2009) contend that
10370-408: Is not classifiable as another category. Currently, no restrictions are enforced on registration of .com or .org, so one can find organizations of all sorts in either of those domains, as well as other top-level domains including newer, more specific ones which may apply to particular sorts of organization including .museum for museums and .coop for cooperatives . Organizations might also register by
SECTION 60
#173277289854810540-436: Is similar to the blast energy equivalent of the 1980 volcanic eruption of Mount St. Helens . The researchers also concluded impactors of this size hit the Earth only at an average interval scale of millennia. In June 2007, scientists from the University of Bologna identified a lake in the Tunguska region as a possible impact crater from the event. They do not dispute that the Tunguska body exploded in midair, but believe that
10710-472: Is the B612 Foundation's Sentinel Program Architect, as well as a physicist, academic and a former executive-level manager at NASA , the U.S. space agency. He is a professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University and has been engaged in space-related research as well as program, project and executive management for more than 35 years including 20 years with NASA , culminating his career there as director of NASA's Ames Research Center . At Ames he
10880-623: Is the chairman of the B612 Foundation's Sentinel Standing Review Team (SSRT), and a former executive-level manager at NASA . He served with NASA for 30 years, including his position as Associate Director for Flight Programs and Mission Assurance at their Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) organization, and "has been at the forefront in leading many of the most successful U.S. space missions, including Galileo's mission to Jupiter, Cassini–Huygens mission to Saturn , development of Genesis, Stardust , Mars 2001 Odyssey , Mars Exploration Rovers , SPITZER and Galaxy Evolution Explorer programs." In 2001 he
11050-411: Is the remuneration package, though many who have been questioned after leaving an NPO have reported that it was stressful work environments and the workload. Public- and private-sector employment have, for the most part, been able to offer more to their employees than most nonprofit agencies throughout history. Either in the form of higher wages, more comprehensive benefit packages, or less tedious work,
11220-476: Is unique in which source of income works best for them. With an increase in NPOs since 2010, organizations have adopted competitive advantages to create revenue for themselves to remain financially stable. Donations from private individuals or organizations can change each year and government grants have diminished. With changes in funding from year to year, many nonprofit organizations have been moving toward increasing
11390-794: The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics 's Von Karman Medal . Hubbard was elected to the International Academy of Astronautics , is a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, has authored more than 50 scientific papers on research and technology and also holds the Carl Sagan Chair at the SETI Institute . His education includes an undergraduate degree in physics and astronomy at Vanderbilt University and
11560-521: The Chelyabinsk meteor of 2013 that went undetected until its explosion over Chelyabinsk Oblast , Russia . The Sentinel Mission was planned to provide an accurate dynamic catalog of asteroids and other NEOs made available to scientists worldwide from the International Astronomical Union 's Minor Planet Center , the data collected would calculate the risk of impact events with our planet, allowing for asteroid deflection by
11730-655: The Mars Pathfinder mission with its airbag landing system and was the manager for their highly successful Lunar Prospector Mission . 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 . Hubbard has received many honors including NASA's highest award, their Distinguished Service Medal , and
11900-538: The Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts . Given the satellite's telescopic accuracy, Sentinel's data may have proven valuable for other possible future missions, such as asteroid mining . B612 was attempting to raise approximately $ 450M to fund the development, launch and operational costs of the telescope, about the cost of a complex freeway interchange , or approximately $ 100M less than
12070-729: The National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS), there are more than 1.5 million nonprofit organizations registered in the United States , including public charities , private foundations , and other nonprofit organizations. Private charitable contributions increased for the fourth consecutive year in 2017 (since 2014), at an estimated $ 410.02 billion. Out of these contributions, religious organizations received 30.9%, education organizations received 14.3%, and human services organizations received 12.1%. Between September 2010 and September 2014, approximately 25.3% of Americans over
12240-567: The Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate (now Krasnoyarsk Krai ), Russia , on the morning of 30 June 1908. The explosion over the sparsely populated East Siberian taiga flattened an estimated 80 million trees over an area of 2,150 km (830 sq mi) of forest, and eyewitness accounts suggest up to three people may have died. The explosion is generally attributed to
12410-692: The Voyager space probes program , NASA's Medal for Outstanding Leadership in 1991 for Galileo, and again in 1999 for the Cassini-Hygens mission. In 1997 Aviation Week and Space Technology presented its Laurels Award to him for outstanding achievement in the field of space. 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. Dr. G. Scott Hubbard
12580-596: The Wikimedia Foundation , have formed board-only structures. The National Association of Parliamentarians has generated concerns about the implications of this trend for the future of openness, accountability, and understanding of public concerns in nonprofit organizations. Specifically, they note that nonprofit organizations, unlike business corporations, are not subject to market discipline for products and shareholder discipline of their capital; therefore, without membership control of major decisions such as
12750-591: The Yarkovsky effect . 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 . 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
12920-514: The bomb that destroyed the city of Hiroshima during World War II. Tsunamis can also occur after a medium-sized or larger asteroid impacts an ocean surface or other large body of water. The probability of a mid-sized asteroid (similar to the one that destroyed the Tunguska River area of Russia in 1908 ) hitting Earth during the 21st century has been estimated at 30%. Since the Earth is currently more populated than in previous eras, there
13090-547: The comet's tail across the upper atmosphere. The cometary hypothesis gained a general acceptance among Soviet Tunguska investigators by the 1960s. In 1978, Slovak astronomer Ľubor Kresák suggested that the body was a fragment of Comet Encke , a periodic comet with a period of just over three years that stays entirely within Jupiter's orbit. It is also responsible for the Beta Taurids , an annual meteor shower with
13260-446: The near-Earth objects (NEOs) that can pose a threat to Earth, and to also fully develop impact avoidance capabilities. That recommended level of budgetary support would permit up to 10–20 years of advance warning in order to create a sufficient window for the required trajectory deflection. Their recommendations were made to a NASA Advisory Council, but were ultimately unsuccessful in obtaining Congressional funding due to NASA, lacking
13430-667: The space industry . 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. It also assisted the Association of Space Explorers in helping the United Nations establish the International Asteroid Warning Network , as well as
13600-404: The 1260 mm long core sample pulled from the bottom of the lake, representing an age older than the Tunguska event. Additionally, there are problems with impact physics: It is unlikely that a stony meteorite in the right size range would have the mechanical strength necessary to survive atmospheric passage intact while retaining a velocity high enough to excavate a crater that size on reaching
13770-441: The 17th an unusual atmospheric event was observed. At 7:43 the noise akin to a strong wind was heard. Immediately afterward a horrific thump sounded, followed by an earthquake that literally shook the buildings as if they were hit by a large log or a heavy rock. The first thump was followed by a second, and then a third. Then the interval between the first and the third thumps was accompanied by an unusual underground rattle, similar to
13940-521: The ASE, worked with COPUOS since 2001 to establish international involvement for both impact disaster responses, and on deflection missions to prevent impact events. According to Foundation Chair Emeritus Rusty Schweickart in 2013, "No government in the world today has explicitly assigned the responsibility for planetary protection to any of its agencies". In October 2013, COPUOS's Scientific and Technical Subcommittee approved several measures, later approved by
14110-545: The Atlantic just before reaching Africa. At that time, a computer simulation estimated Apophis's hypothetical impact in countries, such as Colombia and Venezuela, could have resulted in more than 10 million casualties. Alternately, an impact in the Atlantic or Pacific oceans could produce a deadly tsunami over 240 metres (about 800 ft) in height, capable of destroying many coastal areas and cities. A series of later, more accurate observations of 99942 Apophis, combined with
14280-516: The B612 Foundation on October 7, 2002, with its first goal being to "significantly alter the orbit of an asteroid in a controlled manner". Schweickart became an early public face of the foundation and served as chairman on its board of directors . In 2010, as part of an ad hoc task force on planetary defense, he advocated increasing NASA's annual budget by $ 250M–$ 300 million over a 10-year period (with an operational maintenance budget of up to $ 75 million per year after that) in order to more fully catalog
14450-480: The B612 Foundation, later serving as its Chair and in 2014 is currently its chief executive officer . Lu holds a commercial pilot license with multi-engine instrument ratings, accumulating some 1,500 hours of flight time. Among his honors are NASA's highest awards, its Distinguished Service and Exceptional Service medals , as well as the Russian Gagarin, Komorov and Beregovoy Medals . Thomas R. Gavin
14620-656: The Committee on Meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences, as part of an initiative to dispose of flammable nitrate film . Positive prints were preserved for further study in Tomsk . Expeditions sent to the area in the 1950s and 1960s found microscopic silicate and magnetite spheres in siftings of the soil. Similar spheres were predicted to exist in the felled trees, although they could not be detected by contemporary means. Later expeditions did identify such spheres in
14790-423: The Earth as bolides , (fireballs), often with little notice. During an average 24-hour period, the Earth sweeps through some 100 million particles of interplanetary dust and pieces of cosmic debris, only a very minor amount of which arrives on the ground as meteorites. 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
14960-502: The Earth shook, and when I was on the ground, I pressed my head down, fearing rocks would smash it. When the sky opened up, hot wind raced between the houses, like from cannons, which left traces in the ground like pathways, and it damaged some crops. Later we saw that many windows were shattered, and in the barn, a part of the iron lock snapped. Testimony of Chuchan of the Shanyagir tribe, as recorded by I. M. Suslov in 1926: We had
15130-400: The Earth's atmosphere. The largest asteroid air burst observed with modern instrumentation was the 500-kiloton Chelyabinsk meteor in 2013, which shattered windows and produced meteorites. In 2020, a group of Russian scientists used a range of computer models to calculate the passage of asteroids with diameters of 200, 100, and 50 metres at oblique angles across Earth's atmosphere. They used
15300-402: The Earth's surface, leaving no impact crater . The Tunguska event is the largest impact event on Earth in recorded history , though much larger impacts occurred in prehistoric times. An explosion of this magnitude would be capable of destroying a large metropolitan area . The event has been depicted in numerous works of fiction . The equivalent Torino scale rating for the impactor is 8:
15470-455: The NPO's reputation, making other employees happy, and attracting new donors. Liabilities promised on the full faith and credit of the organization but not recorded anywhere constitute accounting fraud . But even indirect liabilities negatively affect the financial sustainability of the NPO, and the NPO will have financial problems unless strict controls are instated. Some commenters have argued that
15640-578: The Sentinel Standing Review Team (SSRT), plus Public Relations. 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 is a veteran of two Space Shuttle missions and an extended stay aboard the International Space Station which included
15810-464: The Tunguska body was a small comet . A comet is composed of dust and volatiles , such as water ice and frozen gases, and could have been completely vaporised by the impact with Earth's atmosphere, leaving no obvious traces. The comet hypothesis was further supported by the glowing skies (or "skyglows" or "bright nights") observed across Eurasia for several evenings after the impact, which are possibly explained by dust and ice that had been dispersed from
15980-850: The UN General Assembly in December, to deal with terrestrial asteroid impacts, including the creation of an International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN) plus two advisory groups: the Space Missions Planning Advisory Group (SMPAG), and the Impact Disaster Planning Advisory Group (IDPAG). The IAWN warning network will act as a clearinghouse for shared information on dangerous asteroids and for any future terrestrial impact events that are identified. The Space Missions Planning Advisory Group will coordinate joint studies of
16150-671: The UN is needed, said Schweickart, to guide the policymakers of its member nations on several important NEO-related aspects. However, as asserted by the Foundation, the new UN measures only constitute a starting point. To be effective they will need to be enhanced by further policies and resources implemented at both the national and supernational levels. 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
16320-492: The University of Maryland and co-chair of a 2009 U.S. National Research Council study on asteroid threats, plus others. The difficulty of quickly intercepting an imminent asteroid threat to Earth was made apparent during the testimony: REP. STEWART: ... are we technologically capable of launching something that could intercept [an asteroid with 2 years of advance warning]? ... DR. A'HEARN: No. If we had spacecraft plans on
16490-565: The aftermath of the February 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor explosion —where an approximate 20 metres (66 ft) asteroid entered the atmosphere undetected at about Mach 60 , becoming a brilliant superbolide meteor before exploding over Chelyabinsk, Russia—the B612 foundation experienced a "surge of interest" in its project to detect asteroids, with a corresponding increase in funding donations. After providing Congressional testimony Dr. Lu noted that
16660-461: The age of 16 volunteered for a nonprofit. In the United States, both nonprofit organizations and not-for-profit organizations are tax-exempt. There are various types of nonprofit exemptions, such as 501(c)(3) organizations that are a religious, charitable, or educational-based organization that does not influence state and federal legislation, and 501(c)(7) organizations that are for pleasure, recreation, or another nonprofit purpose. There
16830-635: The aid of flashbulbs) in Sweden and Scotland. It has been theorized that this sustained glowing effect was due to light passing through high-altitude ice particles that had formed at extremely low temperatures as a result of the explosion – a phenomenon that decades later was reproduced by Space Shuttles . In the United States, a Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory program at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California observed
17000-452: The alteration of an asteroid's spin rate, as well as changing the orbit of one part of a binary asteroid pair. 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. Landing a nuclear-powered plasma engined pusher vehicle on the asteroid's surface was seen as promising, an early proposal that would later encounter
17170-649: The appropriate country code top-level domain for their country. In 2020, nonprofit organizations began using microvlogging (brief videos with short text formats) on TikTok to reach Gen Z, engage with community stakeholders, and overall build community. TikTok allowed for innovative engagement between nonprofit organizations and younger generations. During COVID-19, TikTok was specifically used to connect rather than inform or fundraise, as its fast-paced, tailored For You Page separates itself from other social media apps such as Facebook and Twitter. Some organizations offer new, positive-sounding alternative terminology to describe
17340-600: The area's isolation and significant political upheaval affecting Russia in the 1910s. In 1921, the Russian mineralogist Leonid Kulik led a team to the Podkamennaya Tunguska River basin to conduct a survey for the Soviet Academy of Sciences . Although they never visited the central blast area, the many local accounts of the event led Kulik to believe that a giant meteorite impact had caused
17510-401: The best of the newly minted workforce. It has been mentioned that most nonprofits will never be able to match the pay of the private sector and therefore should focus their attention on benefits packages, incentives and implementing pleasurable work environments. A good environment is ranked higher than salary and pressure of work. NPOs are encouraged to pay as much as they are able and offer
17680-689: The blast were detected in Germany, Denmark, Croatia, and the United Kingdom – and as far away as Batavia, Dutch East Indies , and Washington, D.C. It is estimated that, in some places, the resulting shock wave was equivalent to an earthquake measuring 5.0 on the Richter scale . Over the next few days, night skies in Asia and Europe were aglow. There are contemporaneous reports of brightly lit photographs being successfully taken at midnight (without
17850-669: The bogs. The nitrogen is believed to have been deposited as acid rain , a suspected fallout from the explosion. Other scientists disagree: "Some papers report that hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen isotopic compositions with signatures similar to those of CI and CM carbonaceous chondrites were found in Tunguska peat layers dating from the TE (Kolesnikov et al. 1999, 2003) and that iridium anomalies were also observed (Hou et al. 1998, 2004). Measurements performed in other laboratories have not confirmed these results (Rocchia et al. 1990; Tositti et al. 2006)." Researcher John Anfinogenov has suggested that
18020-705: The books already, that would take a year—I mean a typical small mission ... takes four years from approval to start to launch ... As a result of a set of hearings by the NASA Advisory Committee following the Chelyabinsk explosion in 2013, in conjunction with a White House request to double its budget, NASA's Near Earth Object Program funding was increased to $ 40.5 M/year in its FY2014 (Fiscal Year 2014) budget. It had previously been increased to $ 20.5 M/year in FY2012 (about 0.1% of NASA's annual budget at
18190-510: The bottom of Lake Cheko, they identified a layer of radionuclide contamination from mid-20th century nuclear testing at Novaya Zemlya . The depth of this layer gave an average annual sedimentation rate of between 3.6 and 4.6 mm a year. These sedimentation values are less than half of the 1 cm/year calculated by Gasperini et al. in their 2009 publication on their analysis of the core they took from Lake Cheko in 1999. The Russian scientists in 2017 counted at least 280 such annual varves in
18360-515: The calculation of a Level 4 risk on the Torino Scale impact hazard chart . In July 2005, B612 formally asked NASA to investigate the possibility that the asteroid's post-2029 orbit could be in orbital resonance with Earth, which would increase the likelihood of a future impact. The Foundation also asked NASA to investigate whether a transponder should be placed on the asteroid to enable more accurate tracking of how its orbit would be changed by
18530-498: The case from a nuclear explosion and estimate that the air burst had an energy range from 3 to 5 megatons of TNT (13 to 21 PJ). The 15-megaton ( Mt ) estimate represents an energy about 1,000 times greater than that of Trinity , and roughly equal to that of the United States' Castle Bravo nuclear test in 1954 (which measured 15.2 Mt) and one third that of the Soviet Union 's Tsar Bomba test in 1961. A 2019 paper suggests
18700-565: The community; for example aid and development programs, medical research, education, and health services. It is possible for a nonprofit to be both member-serving and community-serving. Nonprofit organizations are not driven by generating profit, but they must bring in enough income to pursue their social goals. Nonprofits are able to raise money in different ways. This includes income from donations from individual donors or foundations; sponsorship from corporations; government funding; programs, services or merchandise sales, and investments. Each NPO
18870-465: The different types of natural catastrophes that can occur on our planet, asteroid strikes are the only one that the world now has the technical capability to prevent. B612 is one of several organizations to propose detailed dynamic surveys of NEOs and preventative measures such as asteroid deflection. Other groups include Chinese researchers, NASA in the United States, NEOShield in Europe, as well as
19040-402: The diversity of their funding sources. For example, many nonprofits that have relied on government grants have started fundraising efforts to appeal to individual donors. Most nonprofits have staff that work for the company, possibly using volunteers to perform the nonprofit's services under the direction of the paid staff. Nonprofits must be careful to balance the salaries paid to staff against
19210-420: The effects of the conventional Operation Blowdown . These effects are caused by the blast wave produced by large air-burst explosions. The trees directly below the explosion are stripped as the blast wave moves vertically downward, but remain standing upright, while trees farther away are knocked over because the blast wave is travelling closer to horizontal when it reaches them. Soviet experiments performed in
19380-432: The election of the board, there are few inherent safeguards against abuse. A rebuttal to this might be that as nonprofit organizations grow and seek larger donations, the degree of scrutiny increases, including expectations of audited financial statements. A further rebuttal might be that NPOs are constrained, by their choice of legal structure, from financial benefit as far as distribution of profit to members and directors
19550-475: The establishment and management of NPOs and that require compliance with corporate governance regimes. Most larger organizations are required to publish their financial reports detailing their income and expenditure publicly. In many aspects, they are similar to corporate business entities though there are often significant differences. Both not-for-profit and for-profit corporate entities must have board members, steering-committee members, or trustees who owe
19720-498: The event. Upon returning, he persuaded the Soviet government to fund an expedition to the suspected impact zone, based on the prospect of salvaging meteoric iron . Kulik led a scientific expedition to the Tunguska blast site in 1927. He hired local Evenki hunters to guide his team to the centre of the blast area, where they expected to find an impact crater . To their surprise, there was no crater at ground zero . Instead they found
19890-426: The explosion is a meteor air burst by an asteroid 6–10 km (4–6 mi) above the Earth's surface. Meteoroids enter Earth's atmosphere from outer space every day, travelling at a speed of at least 11 km/s (7 mi/s). The heat generated by compression of air in front of the body ( ram pressure ) as it travels through the atmosphere is immense and most meteoroids burn up or explode before they reach
20060-838: The explosive power of the Tunguska event may have been around 20–30 megatons. Since the second half of the 20th century, close monitoring of Earth's atmosphere through infrasound and satellite observation has shown that asteroid air bursts with energies comparable to those of nuclear weapons routinely occur, although Tunguska-sized events, on the order of 5–15 megatons , are much rarer. Eugene Shoemaker estimated that 20-kiloton events occur annually and that Tunguska-sized events occur about once every 300 years. More recent estimates place Tunguska-sized events at about once every thousand years, with 5-kiloton air bursts averaging about once per year. Most of these are thought to be caused by asteroid impactors, as opposed to mechanically weaker cometary materials, based on their typical penetration depths into
20230-626: The frequency of dangerous asteroid impacts hitting Earth was from three to ten times greater than previously believed a dozen or so years ago (earlier estimates had pegged the odds as one per 300,000 years). 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. Dr. Brown's UWO study used infrasound signals generated by asteroids that released more than
20400-445: The ground. Though scientific consensus is that the Tunguska explosion was caused by the impact of a small asteroid, there are some dissenters. Astrophysicist Wolfgang Kundt has proposed that the Tunguska event was caused by the release and subsequent explosion of 10 million tons of natural gas from within the Earth's crust. The basic idea is that natural gas leaked out of the crust and then rose to its equal-density height in
20570-429: The ground. Early estimates of the energy of the Tunguska air burst ranged from 10–15 megatons of TNT (42–63 petajoules ) to 30 megatons of TNT (130 PJ), depending on the exact height of the burst as estimated when the scaling laws from the effects of nuclear weapons are employed. More recent calculations that include the effect of the object's momentum find that more of the energy was focused downward than would be
20740-485: The ground. Military satellites have been observing these explosions for decades. In 2019 astronomers searched for hypothesized asteroids ~100 metres in diameter from the Taurid swarm between 5–11 July, and 21 July – 10 August. As of February 2020 , there have been no reports of discoveries of any such objects. In 1983, astronomer Zdeněk Sekanina published a paper criticising the comet hypothesis. He pointed out that
20910-422: The impact was caused by a comet because of the sightings of noctilucent clouds following the impact, a phenomenon caused by massive amounts of water vapour in the upper atmosphere. They compared the noctilucent cloud phenomenon to the exhaust plume from NASA's Endeavour Space Shuttle . A team of Russian researchers led by Edward Drobyshevski in 2009 suggested that the near-Earth asteroid 2005 NB 56 may be
21080-712: The international Spaceguard Foundation . 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. 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. Twenty researchers participated, principally from various NASA facilities plus
21250-466: The isotopic ratios measured in the adjacent layers, and this abnormality was not found in bogs outside the area. The region of the bogs showing these anomalous signatures also contains an unusually high proportion of iridium , similar to the iridium layer found in the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary . These unusual proportions are believed to result from debris from the falling body that deposited in
21420-501: The issue Schweickart was dismayed to hear from congressional staff members that, while U.S. lawmakers involved in the hearing understood the seriousness of the threat, they would likely not legislate funding for planetary defense as "making the deflection of asteroids a priority might backfire in [their] reelection campaigns". The Foundation intended to launch Sentinel in 2017–2018, with initiation of data transfer for on- Earth processing anticipated no later than 6 months afterwards. In
21590-495: The journals Science and Nature , was used to produce a short computer-animated video that was presented to the media at the Seattle Museum of Flight . The nearly one and a half minute video displayed a rotating globe with the impact points of about 25 asteroids measuring more than one, and up to 600 kilotons of blast force, that struck the Earth from 2000 to 2013 (for comparison, the nuclear bomb that destroyed Hiroshima
21760-401: The lake (between 100 and 90 cm), and again by subsequent fires (one local fire in the upper 40 cm). In 2017, new research by Russian scientists pointed to a rejection of the theory that the Tunguska event created Lake Cheko. They used soil research to determine that the lake is 280 years old or even much older; in any case clearly older than the Tunguska event. In analyzing soils from
21930-456: The lake's deepest point that may be a fragment of the colliding body. Finally, the lake's long axis points to the Tunguska explosion's hypocentre, about 7.0 km (4.3 mi) away. Work is still being done at Lake Cheko to determine its origins. The main points of the study are that: Cheko, a small lake located in Siberia close to the epicentre of the 1908 Tunguska explosion, might fill
22100-421: The limited instrumentation available at the time of the event, modern scientific interpretations of its cause and magnitude have relied chiefly on damage assessments and geological studies conducted many years after the event. Estimates of its energy have ranged from 3–30 megatons of TNT (13–126 petajoules). Only more than a decade after the event did any scientific analysis of the region take place, in part due to
22270-408: The lower unit (below ~100 cm) contains abundant forest tree pollen, but no hydrophytes, suggesting that no lake existed then, but a taiga forest growing on marshy ground (Fig. 5). Pollen and microcharcoal show a progressive reduction in the taiga forest, from the bottom of the core upward. This reduction may have been caused by fires (two local episodes below ~100 cm), then by the TE and the formation of
22440-491: The many online videos recorded of the asteroid's explosion over Chelyabinsk made a significant impact on millions of viewers worldwide, saying "There's nothing like a hundred YouTube videos to do that." In 2014 eight key staff positions were designated, covering the offices of the chief executive officer (CEO), chief operating officer (COO), Sentinel Program Architecture (SPA), Sentinel Mission Direction (SMD), Sentinel Program Management (SPM), Sentinel Mission Science (SMS) and
22610-517: The mid-1960s, with model forests (made of matches on wire stakes) and small explosive charges slid downward on wires, produced butterfly-shaped blast patterns similar to the pattern found at the Tunguska site. The experiments suggested that the object had approached at an angle of roughly 30 degrees from the ground and 115 degrees from north and had exploded in midair. In 1930, the British meteorologist and mathematician F. J. W. Whipple suggested that
22780-511: The money paid to provide services to the nonprofit's beneficiaries. Organizations whose salary expenses are too high relative to their program expenses may face regulatory scrutiny. A second misconception is that nonprofit organizations may not make a profit. Although the goal of nonprofits is not specifically to maximize profits, they still have to operate as a fiscally responsible business. They must manage their income (both grants and donations and income from services) and expenses so as to remain
22950-511: The non-profit Southwest Research Institute , but as well from the University of California, University of Michigan, and the Institute for Independent Study. All were interested in contributing to the proposed creation of an asteroid deflection capability. The seminar participants included Rusty Schweickart , a former Apollo astronaut , and Clark Chapman , a planetary scientist . Among the proposed experimental research missions discussed were
23120-445: The nonprofit sector today regarding newly graduated workers, and to some, NPOs have for too long relegated hiring to a secondary priority, which could be why they find themselves in the position many do. While many established NPOs are well-funded and comparative to their public sector competitors, many more are independent and must be creative with which incentives they use to attract and maintain people. The initial interest for many
23290-588: The north-east some kind of artillery barrage, that repeated at intervals of 15 minutes at least 10 times. In Kirensk in a few buildings in the walls facing north-east window glass shook. Siberian Life newspaper, 27 July 1908: When the meteorite fell, strong tremors in the ground were observed, and near the Lovat village of the Kansk uezd two strong explosions were heard, as if from large-calibre artillery. Krasnoyaretz newspaper, 13 July 1908: Kezhemskoye village. On
23460-411: The organization a fiduciary duty of loyalty and trust. A notable exception to this involves churches , which are often not required to disclose finances to anyone, including church members. In the United States, nonprofit organizations are formed by filing bylaws, articles of incorporation , or both in the state in which they expect to operate. The act of incorporation creates a legal entity enabling
23630-452: The organization to be treated as a distinct body (corporation) by law and to enter into business dealings, form contracts, and own property as individuals or for-profit corporations can. Nonprofits can have members, but many do not. The nonprofit may also be a trust or association of members. The organization may be controlled by its members who elect the board of directors , board of governors or board of trustees . A nonprofit may have
23800-511: The organization's sustainability. An advantage of nonprofits registered in the UK is that they benefit from some reliefs and exemptions. Charities and nonprofits are exempt from Corporation Tax as well as the trustees being exempt from Income Tax. There may also be tax relief available for charitable giving, via Gift Aid, monetary donations, and legacies. Founder's syndrome is an issue organizations experience as they expand. Dynamic founders, who have
23970-446: The peasants saw to the northwest, rather high above the horizon, some strangely bright (impossible to look at) bluish-white heavenly body, which for 10 minutes moved downwards. The body appeared as a "pipe", i.e., a cylinder. The sky was cloudless, only a small dark cloud was observed in the general direction of the bright body. It was hot and dry. As the body neared the ground (forest), the bright body seemed to smudge, and then turned into
24140-550: The public and private sectors have enjoyed an advantage over NPOs in attracting employees. Traditionally, the NPO has attracted mission-driven individuals who want to assist their chosen cause. Compounding the issue is that some NPOs do not operate in a manner similar to most businesses, or only seasonally. This leads many young and driven employees to forego NPOs in favor of more stable employment. Today, however, nonprofit organizations are adopting methods used by their competitors and finding new means to retain their employees and attract
24310-483: The receipt of significant funding from large for-profit corporations can ultimately alter the NPO's functions. A frequent measure of an NPO's efficiency is its expense ratio (i.e. expenditures on things other than its programs, divided by its total expenditures). Competition for employees with the public and private sector is another problem that nonprofit organizations inevitably face, particularly for management positions. There are reports of major talent shortages in
24480-456: The recent Deep impact mission that travelled to Comet Tempel 1 , and near-Earth asteroids with the occasional use of the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes . Buie also assists in the development of advanced astronomical instrumentation. Nonprofit organization A nonprofit organization ( NPO ), also known as a nonbusiness entity , nonprofit institution , or simply a nonprofit ,
24650-601: The recovery of previously unseen data, revised the odds of a collision in 2036 as being virtually nil, and effectively ruled it out. B612 Foundation members assisted the Association of Space Explorers (ASE) in helping obtain United Nations (UN) oversight of NEO tracking and deflection missions through the UN's Committee On the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UN COPUOS) along with COPUOS's Action Team 14 (AT-14) expert group. Several members of B612, also members of
24820-407: The resin of the trees. Chemical analysis showed that the spheres contained high proportions of nickel relative to iron, which is also found in meteorites, leading to the conclusion they were of extraterrestrial origin. The concentration of the spheres in different regions of the soil was also found to be consistent with the expected distribution of debris from a meteor air burst . Later studies of
24990-414: The sector in its own terms, without relying on terminology used for the government or business sectors. However, use of terminology by a nonprofit of self-descriptive language that is not legally compliant risks confusing the public about nonprofit abilities, capabilities, and limitations. Tunguska event The Tunguska event was a large explosion of between 3 and 50 megatons that occurred near
25160-570: The sector. The term civil society organization (CSO) has been used by a growing number of organizations, including the Center for the Study of Global Governance . The term citizen sector organization (CSO) has also been advocated to describe the sector – as one of citizens, for citizens – by organizations including Ashoka: Innovators for the Public . Advocates argue that these terms describe
25330-472: The skies are extremely rare, while medium-sized ones are less so, and much smaller ones are more commonplace. Although stony asteroids often explode high in the atmosphere, some objects, especially iron-nickel meteors and other types descending at a steep angle, can explode close to ground level or even directly impact onto land or sea. In the U.S. State of Arizona , the 1,200-metre-wide (3,900 ft) Meteor Crater (officially named Barringer Crater) formed in
25500-437: The spheres found unusual ratios of numerous other metals relative to the surrounding environment, which was taken as further evidence of their extraterrestrial origin. Chemical analysis of peat bogs from the area also revealed numerous anomalies considered consistent with an impact event. The isotopic signatures of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen at the layer of the bogs corresponding to 1908 were found to be inconsistent with
25670-503: The technologies for deflection missions, and as well provide oversight of actual missions. This is due to deflection missions typically involving a progressive movement of an asteroid's predicted impact point across the surface of the Earth (and also across the territories of uninvolved countries) until the NEO is deflected either ahead of, or behind the planet at the point their orbits intersect. An initial framework of international cooperation at
25840-928: The time of the Tunguska event. Pollen analysis reveals that remains of aquatic plants are abundant in the top post-1908 sequence but are absent in the lower pre-1908 portion of the core. These results, including organic C, N and δ C data, suggest that Lake Cheko formed at the time of the Tunguska event. Pollen assemblages confirm the presence of two different units, above and below the ~100‐cm level (Fig. 4). The upper 100‐cm long section, in addition to pollen of taiga forest trees such as Abies, Betula, Juniperus, Larix, Pinus, Picea, and Populus, contains abundant remains of hydrophytes, i.e. , aquatic plants probably deposited under lacustrine conditions similar to those prevailing today. These include both free-floating plants and rooted plants, growing usually in water up to 3–4 metres in depth (Callitriche, Hottonia, Lemna, Hydrocharis, Myriophyllum, Nuphar, Nymphaea, Potamogeton, Sagittaria). In contrast,
26010-499: The time), from an average of about $ 4 M/year between 2002 and 2010. On Earth Day , April 22, 2014, the B612 Foundation formally presented a revised assessment on the frequency of "city-killer" type impact events, based on research led by Canadian planetary scientist Peter Brown of the University of Western Ontario 's (UWO) Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration . Dr. Brown's analysis, "A 500-Kiloton Airburst Over Chelyabinsk and An Enhanced Hazard from Small Impactors", published in
26180-489: The traditional domain noted in RFC 1591 , .org is for "organizations that didn't fit anywhere else" in the naming system, which implies that it is the proper category for non-commercial organizations if they are not governmental, educational, or one of the other types with a specific TLD. It is not designated specifically for charitable organizations or any specific organizational or tax-law status, but encompasses anything that
26350-498: The tree-fall pattern as well as the atmospheric and seismic pressure waves of Tunguska. Four different computer models produced similar results; they concluded that the likeliest candidate for the Tunguska impactor was a stony body between 50 and 80 m (164 and 262 ft) in diameter, entering the atmosphere at roughly 55,000 km/h (34,000 mph), exploding at 10 to 14 km (6 to 9 mi) altitude, and releasing explosive energy equivalent to between 10 and 30 megatons. This
26520-415: The use of gravity tractors to divert their trajectories away from Earth. In order to communicate with the spacecraft while it is orbiting the Sun (at about the same distance as Venus), which can be at times as far as 270 million kilometres (170 million miles) from Earth, the B612 Foundation entered into a Space Act Agreement with NASA for the use of their deep space telecommunication network . Sentinel
26690-562: Was a flash producing a billowing cloud, followed by a pillar of fire that cast a red light on the landscape. The pillar split in two and faded, turning to black. About ten minutes later, there was a sound similar to artillery fire. Eyewitnesses closer to the explosion reported that the source of the sound moved from the east to the north of them. The sounds were accompanied by a shock wave that knocked people off their feet and broke windows hundreds of kilometres away. The explosion registered at seismic stations across Eurasia, and air waves from
26860-579: Was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Hawaii from 1985 to 1988. From 1988 to 1991, he worked at the Space Telescope Science Institute where he assisted in the planning of the first planetary observations made by the Hubble Space Telescope . Since 1983, Pluto and its moons have been a central theme of the research done by Buie, who has published over 85 scientific papers and journal articles. He
27030-473: Was a second sun, my eyes were hurting, I even closed them. It was like what the Russians call lightning. And immediately there was a loud thunderclap. This was the second thunder. The morning was sunny, there were no clouds, our Sun was shining brightly as usual, and suddenly there came a second one! Chekaren and I had some difficulty getting out from under the remains of our hut. Then we saw that above, but in
27200-772: Was appointed associate director for flight projects and mission success for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in May 2001. This was a new position created to provide the JPL Director's Office with oversight of flight projects. He later served as interim director for Solar System exploration. Previously, he was director of JPL's Space Science Flight Projects Directorate, which oversaw the Genesis, Mars 2001 Odyssey, Mars rovers, Spitzer Space Telescope and GALEX projects. He also served as deputy director of JPL's Space and Earth Science Programs Directorate beginning in December 1997. In June 1990 he
27370-700: Was appointed spacecraft system manager for the Cassini–Huygens mission to Saturn, and retained that position until the project's successful launch in 1997. From 1968 to 1990 he was a member of the Galileo and Voyager project offices responsible for mission assurance. He received his bachelor's degree in chemistry from Villanova University in Pennsylvania in 1961. Gavin has been honored on a number of occasions for exceptional work, receiving NASA's Distinguished and Exceptional Service Medals in 1981 for his work on
27540-438: Was constructing Sentinel's 51 cm aluminum mirror, designed for a large field of view with its infrared sensors cooled to 40 K (−233.2 °C ) using Ball's two-stage, closed-Stirling-cycle cryocooler . B612 aimed to produce its space telescope at a significantly lower cost than traditional space science programs by making use of space hardware systems previously developed for earlier programs, rather than designing
27710-463: Was covered with fire. At that moment I became so hot that I couldn't bear it as if my shirt was on fire; from the northern side, where the fire was, came strong heat. I wanted to tear off my shirt and throw it down, but then the sky shut closed, and a strong thump sounded, and I was thrown a few metres. I lost my senses for a moment, but then my wife ran out and led me to the house. After that such noise came, as if rocks were falling or cannons were firing,
27880-615: Was designed to perform continuous observation and analysis during its planned 6 + 1 ⁄ 2 -year operational life, although B612 anticipates it may continue to function for up to 10 years. Using its 51-centimetre (20 in) telescope mirror with sensors built by Ball Aerospace (makers of the Hubble Space Telescope 's instruments), its mission would be to catalog 90% of asteroids with diameters larger than 140 metres (460 ft). There were also plans to catalog smaller Solar System objects as well. The space observatory would measure 7.7 metres (25 ft) by 3.2 metres (10 ft) with
28050-597: Was equivalent to about 16 kilotons of TNT blast force). Of those impacts between 2000 and 2013, eight of them were as large, or larger, than the Hiroshima bomb. Only one of the asteroids, 2008 TC 3 , was detected in advance , some 19 hours before exploding in the atmosphere. As was the case with the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor , no warnings were issued for any of the other impacts. At the presentation, alongside former NASA astronauts Dr. Tom Jones and Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders , Foundation head Ed Lu explained that
28220-420: Was less than before. This was the fourth strike, like normal thunder. Now I remember well there was also one more thunder strike, but it was small, and somewhere far away, where the Sun goes to sleep. Sibir newspaper, 2 July 1908: On the morning of 17th of June, around 9:00, we observed an unusual natural occurrence. In the north Karelinski village [200 verst (213 km (132 mi)) north of Kirensk]
28390-478: Was no wind and no clouds. Upon closer inspection to the north, i.e. where most of the thumps were heard, a kind of an ashen cloud was seen near the horizon, which kept getting smaller and more transparent and possibly by around 2–3 p.m. completely disappeared. Since the 1908 event, an estimated 1,000 scholarly papers (most in Russian) have been published about the Tunguska explosion. Owing to the site's remoteness and
28560-449: Was noise beyond the hut, we could hear trees falling down. Chekaren and I got out of our sleeping bags and wanted to run out, but then the thunder struck. This was the first thunder. The Earth began to move and rock, the wind hit our hut and knocked it over. My body was pushed down by sticks, but my head was in the clear. Then I saw a wonder: trees were falling, the branches were on fire, it became mighty bright, how can I say this, as if there
28730-686: Was responsible for overseeing the work of some 2,600 scientists, engineers and other staff. Currently on the SpaceX Safety Advisory Panel, he previously served as NASA's sole representative on the Space Shuttle Columbia Accident Investigation Board , and also as their first Mars Exploration Program director in 2000, successfully restructuring the entire Mars program in the wake of earlier serious mission failures. Hubbard founded NASA's Astrobiology Institute in 1998; conceived
28900-408: Was sitting by the house at Vanavara Trading Post [approximately 65 kilometres (40 mi) south of the explosion], facing north. [...] I suddenly saw that directly to the north, over Onkoul's Tunguska Road, the sky split in two and fire appeared high and wide over the forest [as Semenov showed, about 50 degrees up – expedition note]. The split in the sky grew larger, and the entire northern side
#547452