[B612 Foundation] June 2013 charity auction

With a slogan of "Prevent The Next Tunguska," the B612 Foundation has launched a new campaign that will not only raise awareness for its mission: preventing life-threatening asteroid impacts, but also will auction for the first time, rare collectors' items flown on historic Apollo and US space shuttle missions.

Items for the auction — which begins at 6 p.m. PDT (9 p.m. EDT) on Thursday, June 27 (0100 GMT June 28) — were donated by B612 Foundation CEO Dr. Ed Lu, three time US shuttle astronaut and 6-month crew member aboard the International Space Station, and B612 Chairman Emeritus Rusty Schweickart, Lunar Module Pilot on the historic Apollo 9 mission. Proceeds from the auction of these personal items flown into space will benefit the non-profit privately funded B612 Sentinel Space Telescope Mission.

"The B612 Foundation is carrying out a space mission on a scale that no other private organization is doing; we want to literally save the world. Not only will the money raised by this auction go to supporting the Sentinel Mission, but also we hope the increased attention to our cause will help everyone realize that they really can take a critical role in protecting our planet in a real and concrete way," continued Lu. "Both Rusty and I were privileged to see the Earth as few others have, and that experience has convinced us that there is nothing more important than the B612 Sentinel Mission – simply because there is no more important mission than protecting our home planet."

The threat of asteroids is real, and the odds of a major asteroid impact with a force capable of destroying any large city somewhere on Earth in your lifetime is 30 percent. To date, only about one percent or 10,000 of the nearly one million asteroids that could potentially hit Earth with enough force to devastate an entire metropolitan city have been observed and tracked. In just the first few months of operation, the Sentinel Space Telescope will surpass this total, and during the first five years of operation, will discover 50 times more Near Earth Objects (NEOs) than have been found by all other telescopes combined throughout history.

We have the technology to deflect these asteroids, but we cannot defend ourselves from an asteroid we have not yet seen. The B612 Sentinel Space Telescope will be the most effective asteroid detection and warning system ever built, and the only telescope capable of finding a million threatening asteroids. Sentinel will provide the missing capability that enables us to protect our planet from these potentially global scale natural disasters.

The last major asteroid impact was in Tunguska, Russia in 1908, where an asteroid destroyed an area larger than the Washington DC Metropolitan Area. More recently on February 15, 2013, we witnessed the close fly-by (17,000 miles from earth) of Asteroid DA-14 and also the real impact of a smaller asteroid near Chelyabinsk, Russia. "These events show us that we are playing a dangerous game of cosmic roulette," continued Lu.

eBay Giving Works Auction with Auction Cause

The B612 Foundation auction is being hosted on eBay Giving Works in partnership with Auction Cause, the recognized leader in cause marketing campaigns. All proceeds of the campaign will help to fund the Sentinel Space Mission – the only space telescope with the capability to find the more than 1 million asteroids that threaten earth.