NASA launched a new program Tuesday, giving anyone interested the opportunity to help the agency stop an android from hitting earth, according to the Christian Science Monitor.
The “Asteroid Grand Challenge” is a way for NASA to get suggestions on how to stop an incoming asteroid.
"NASA already is working to find asteroids that might be a threat to our planet, and while we have found 95 percent of the large asteroids near the Earth's orbit, we need to find all those that might be a threat to Earth," explained Lori Garver, NASA’s deputy administrator, in a news release. "This Grand Challenge is focused on detecting and characterizing asteroids and learning how to deal with potential threats. We will also harness public engagement, open innovation and citizen science to help solve this global problem."
NASA’s “Asteroid Initiative” has a timeline which expands from 2013 to 2022. The initiative includes averting an asteroid that is 500 feet from earth and sending it safely back into orbit. It also includes missions that require sending astronauts to deal with the asteroids. Dates within the timeline include:
2016: Evaluating candidates to send to the asteroid
2017: Start the mission capture the asteroid.
2019: Actually capture the asteroid
2021: Re-direct in back into trans-lunar orbit.
President Barack Obama had outlined a timeline which had NASA sending people to asteroids in 2025, so the agency is ahead of schedule. Obama wants to send astronauts to mars by 2030.
The potential danger of asteroids was brought to the forefront of discussions after a meteor hit the city Chelyabinsk in Russia during February.
NASA has other Grand Challenges that request the public’s input on topics such as economic space travel, telepresence in space and colonization in space.
"I applaud NASA for issuing this Grand Challenge because finding asteroid threats, and having a plan for dealing with them, needs to be an all-hands-on-deck effort," Tom Kalil, deputy director for technology and innovation at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said according to the press release. "The efforts of private-sector partners and our citizen scientists will augment the work NASA already is doing to improve near-Earth object detection capabilities."
Below is the annoucement for the Asteroid Grand Challenge:
