Danica Remy is the COO at B612, an organization out to detect and deflect asteroids before they can impact the Earth. Here she shares their unique mission.

Listen to This Episode

You can also listen on the podcast’s playlist or subscribe and receive new episodes for free.

Episode Summary

* Danica Remy is the Chief Operating Officer at the B612 Foundation, a Silicon Valley organization dedicated to detecting and deflecting asteroids before they can impact the Earth.
* Previously, Danica has served as an executive for tech companies and nonprofits. She never expected to work in planetary defense, but she came on board after meeting Apollo 9 astronaut and B612 co-founder Rusty Schweickart.
* B612 has designed two tech-based solutions toward asteroid detection and deflection: a telescope called Sentinel and a gravity tractor system.
* Danica likes that her position allows her to work directly with others in solving a global problem. With that in mind, she also co-founded Asteroid Day to raise asteroid awareness worldwide.

Guest Links
Danica Remy

* TEDx Talk: Changing the Future One Rock at a Time? | Danica Remy | TEDxVilnius
* Twitter: @mvdar

The B612 Foundation

* Website: b612foundation.org
* Facebook: b612foundation, Twitter: @b612foundation

Asteroid Day

* Website: asteroidday.org
* Facebook: asteroidday, Twitter: @asteroidday

Transcript
This transcript may differ in minor instances from the audio content. Please notify Josh Morgan of any errors you may find.
Monologue by Josh Morgan
Danica Remy is the Chief Operating Officer at the B612 Foundation, an organization based in Silicon Valley. B612 is dedicated to discovering asteroids and then deflecting them before they can impact the Earth. I talked with Danica about B612’s mission, how she got involved, and about Asteroid Day, a holiday that she co-founded in 2015 to raise asteroid awareness.
I’m Josh Morgan. My conversation with Danica is coming up next on The Plural of You, the podcast about people helping people.
This is Episode 31. You can read along if you’d like at pluralofyou.org/031.
Asteroid impacts make for interesting stories or movies, but in reality they can be pretty scary. I imagine most of us have seen photos or dash cam footage of objects falling from the sky in recent years. What surprises me after reading about asteroid activity is that events like these aren’t more common.
We seem to be super fortunate considering the sheer number of objects that surround us. According to data reported by NASA, we’ve discovered about 14,000 near-Earth objects so far. Those include asteroids that are at least 30 meters across or larger, and more are added every year as we find them. Roughly 13 percent of the objects found so far have been classified as potentially hazardous, meaning their orbits may be close enough within the next hundred years to impact our planet. I should emphasize those aren’t exact numbers—there are many more objects we haven’t detected ...