The first Schweikart Prize was awarded to an astronomer who proposed an international campaign to detect objects approaching Earth from the Sun on June 28.

Joseph DeMartini, a doctoral student in astronomy at the University of Maryland, has won a $10,000 grant from the B612 Foundation Award, named for Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweikart. The award is given annually to graduate students with innovative ideas for protecting the planet.

“We can now technically slightly alter the natural clockwork of the solar system to increase the survival of life on Earth,” Schweikart said at a news briefing. “This is a challenge that Joe DeMartini and the many other bright young people who will follow in his footsteps must meet.”

DeMartini said that in addition to funding, the award gives him access to a network of people and organizations that can help implement his proposal to focus ground-based telescopes on the sun about an hour before sunrise and after sunset.

The goal is to detect asteroids or comets that have crossed Earth’s orbit in Apollo or Athens orbit “because those have the best chance of making a potential impact,” DeMartini said.

Apollo asteroids spend most of their time outside Earth’s orbit. Aten asteroids are generally inside Earth’s orbit.

“You have to look in the direction of the sun to see the Aton family asteroids for most of their orbits,” DeMartini said.

ruby observatory

DeMartini hopes the award will specifically support a proposal by the Vera K. Rubin Observatory in Chile to conduct a detailed twilight study of the circumsolar region. A network of ground-based observatories could make additional observations at sunrise and sunset to confirm the discovery. Recent advances in NEO verification techniques will provide further support for orbital characterization.

DeMartini said ground-based telescopes ignore a “huge portion” of the inner solar system because the sky is so bright.

“When the sun is just below the horizon at sunset or just below the horizon before sunrise, a very bright solar object suddenly disappears from our field of view,” DeMartini said. “The sky is still a little bright, but we can point our telescope at the sun and the image will not be completely overexposed from the sun’s brightness.”