The Earthrise Institute
earthriseinstitute.org

The Earthrise Institute was founded in 1993, under the name Southwest Institute for Space Research. We formally changed our name in 2006 to better reflect our mission and activities.

" Simply stated, the mission of the Earthrise Institute is to use astronomy, space, and other related endeavors as a tool for breaking down international and intercultural barriers and for bringing humanity together."

The Earthrise Institute takes its name from the images of Earth taken from lunar orbit by the Apollo astronauts. These images, which have captivated people from around the planet, show our Earth as one small, beautiful jewel in space, completely absent of any arbitrary political divisions or boundaries. They have provided new inspiration to us to protect what is right now the only home we have, and they encourage us to treat the other human beings who live on this planet as fellow residents and citizens of that home. They show, moreover, that we are all in this together, and that anything we do involves all of us.

In that spirit, the Earthrise Institute seeks to preserve and enhance the ideals contained within the Earthrise images via the following activities:

*Develop a worldwide globally-interconnected network of astronomical facilities, each of which will contain several telescopes that are suitable for research and educational purposes. We ultimately plan to have these telescopes available for usage both remotely and "on site." By forming an interactive network with these facilities we expect to create an environment that will encourage Earthrise participants from various nations and cultures to collaborate with each other in various research and eductional projects.

For the first phase of this project we are developing our initial dark-sky facility, at a site in southern New Mexico that is immediately adjacent to the site from which Comet Hale-Bopp was discovered.

*Maintain active research projects which further our knowledge of the universe around us. Our goal is to create and maintain a "learning-by-doing"
environment wherein Earthrise students are active participants in the research projects and are appropriately credited for the work they perform.

*Design and develop a series of "Earthrise Centers" at appropriate locations around the world, with the goal of allowing a larger audience to share in the Earthrise experience. These centers will permit visitors to utilize the telescopes within our network, both remotely and, where appropriate, on-site.

*Organize participatory endeavors for special occasions, for example, trips for events like total solar eclipses. We will also organize seminars and other venues for Earthrise participants to share their activities and results.

*Develop a mass-market program that will share the Earthrise concept with a larger audience. This will include such items as books, curriculum materials, an interactive web presence, and (eventually) a television or other medium production. One such program we hope to get underway within the relatively near future is Earthrise Radio, with which we hope to share the Earthrise concept with a global audience.

One additional way we seek to readch a larger audience is through the formation of "Earthrise Clubs" and groups at colleges and high schools around the planet. This will help to install the lessons of the Earthrise concept within the younger generation that will someday inherit this planet from us.

*Create and license a wide variety of Earthrise products.

We are presently in the very early stages of carrying out these planned activities. We acquired the property for the Earthrise dark-sky site in 2004, and pending sufficient funding we hope to have the first telescope sited there and operational in a remote capacity by about mid-2007. We will also be participating in the PlanetQuest project that is designed to search for planets around other stars, and one of the telescopes at our dark-sky site will be dedicated to usage by PlanetQuest.

We are currently inaugurating our first large-scale educational project, "Countdown to 500 Comets," wherein participants will collaborate with Earthrise founder and Comet Hale-Bopp co-discoverer Alan Hale as he strives for his 500th visually observed comet. Once we have telescopes operational at the Earthrise dark-sky site we will be able to utilize these to obtain images of the comets observed during the course of the project.

During the fall of 2006 we received a commitment from private space explorer Anousheh Ansari of $100,000 to Earthrise, contingent upon our raising an equivalent amount of matching funds. We are presently in the midst of a fundraising campaign to raise these funds, which when combined with the generous contribution from Ms. Ansari will allow us to begin formal operations.

For more information please visit these links:
Earthrise institute: http://www.earthriseinstitute.org

Earthrise dark-sky site: http://www.earthriseinstitute.org/darksky.html

Countdown to 500 Comets: http://www.earthriseinstitute.org/comets.html

Fundraising campaign: http://www.earthriseinstitute.org/ansari.html

PlanetQuest: http://www.planetquest.org