The Sentinel Mission tour of Ball Aerospace, builder of the IR space telescope.
Sentinel is a satellite the size of a Cadillac Escalade inserted into a near-Venus orbit by a Falcon 9 rocket. It will map all of the near-Earth objects (asteroids and UFOs mind you) that could pose a threat to Earth, and given today’s capabilities in computational simulation, we will be able to project the next 100 years of all threats to Earth, from the biggies to the city-killers. With advance warning, deflection is simply ramming into the passing asteroid to impart a small velocity change (that compounds a positional change over decades) to guarantees it will miss a future impact with Earth.
As our colleague and Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart put it: “We are at a unique time in history where we have the capability to change the trajectory of our Solar System, ever so slightly, to protect life on Earth.”
The Ballers estimate that it will take 50 months to design and build, with 1000 people, 100K parts, and a million labor hours. On our weekend tour, the Ball President told us that this is “the most exciting project Ball has ever undertaken” (and that includes a rich history of James Webb, Kepler, Hubble, Chandra, and Spitzer).
Why space? The infrared light that we are looking for does not get through Earth’s atmosphere. Asteroids are dark, like charcoal, but warm from orbiting the sun.
Why Venus orbit?
1) Look away from the sun.
2) NEOs inside of Earth’s orbit have a higher statistical chance of impact
3) We see the hot sun-facing side if it’s not a rotisserie
4) Shorter orbital period around the sun affords a faster survey
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