Sentinel Space Telescope

The B612 Foundation and Ball Aerospace are teaming to launch the Sentinel Space Telescope, the first private space telescope.

Sentinel's mission will be to find near-Earth asteroids.  Experts think it could find 500,000 such bodies in its six-year lifespan, compared to 10,000 found so far.  Sentinel will be an infrared telescope stationed somewhere around the orbit of Venus, so it will be looking out away from the Sun.  The goals of the project are to find asteroids that threaten Earth, asteroids suitable for a human mission, and asteroids that would be targets for future mining operations.

Sentinel is scheduled for launch in 2017.