Do your part in protecting Earth from asteroids

During a panel discussion Sunday at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, NASA representatives discussed how citizen scientists have made a difference in hunting down potentially hazardous asteroids in space. They also announced the release of a desktop software application developed by NASA in partnership with Planetary Resources, Inc., of Redmond, Wash. The application is based on an Asteroid Data Hunter-derived algorithm that analyzes images for potential asteroids. It’s a tool that can be used by amateur astronomers and citizen scientists.

The software has the potential to increase the number of new asteroid discoveries by amateur astronomers.

Analysis of images taken of our solar system’s belt asteroids between Mars and Jupiter using the algorithm showed a 15 percent increase in positive identification of new asteroids.

“We are extremely encouraged by the algorithm created and it’s already making a difference. This increase in knowledge will help assess more quickly which asteroids are potential threats, human destinations or resource rich,” said Chris Lewicki, president and chief engineer at Planetary Resources.

Astronomers find asteroids by taking images of the same place in the sky and looking for star-like objects that move between frames, an approach that has been used since before Pluto was discovered in 1930. This new algorithm gives astronomers the ability to use computers to autonomously and rapidly check the images and determine which objects are suitable for follow up, which leads to finding more asteroids than previously possible.

“Moreover, this software can now be used to analyze new images and is available to any observer who wants to use it,” said Jose Luis Galache of the Minor Planet Center.

The desktop software application is free and can be used on any basic desktop or laptop computer. Amateur astronomers may take images from their telescopes and analyze them with the application. The application will tell the user whether a matching asteroid record exists and offer a way to report new findings to the Minor Planet Center, which then confirms and archives new discoveries.

The new asteroid hunting application can be downloaded at: http://topcoder.com/asteroids

Join the hunt for potentially hazardous asteroids

The asteroid mining company Planetary Resources announced on Thursday that they have entered into a collaboration with Zooniverse that will empower the general public to aid in the search for dangerous near Earth asteroids (NEAs).

It's been 66 million years since scientists believe a 10-kilometer asteroid slammed into the Earth, leading to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Today, there are approximately 620,000 objects that are actively tracked in our Solar System, which represents merely one percent of the 60 million asteroids estimated to orbit the Sun.

Planetary Resources is in the final stretch of its Kickstarter campaign, ARKYD- the world's first crowdfunded space telescope for the public, which has generated nearly 15,000 supporters and $1.2 million in pledges. If pledges reach $1.7 million in the three remaining days of the campaign, Planetary Resources and Zooniverse will create Asteroid Zoo, a program to allow students, citizen scientists and space enthusiasts to find potentially hazardous asteroids.

Modeled after Zooniverse's popular Galaxy Zoo and other astronomy projects, Asteroid Zoo will allow the public to search through more than three-million images collected by Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) for undiscovered asteroids in a fun, game-like process from their personal computers. The public's findings will be used by scientists to develop advanced asteroid-searching technology for telescopes on Earth and in space, including the ARKYD. Of all the asteroids ever discovered, 93 percent were found in the last 15 years and nearly half of the near-Earth asteroids were discovered by CSS.

Chris Lintott, astronomer at the University of Oxford and Zooniverse principal investigator said, "Zooniverse volunteers have already inspected more than a million galaxies, discovered planets and kept an eye on solar storms. We're looking forward to working with Planetary Resources to make sure citizen scientists everywhere can make a real contribution to spotting asteroids too."

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