At the South by Southwest (SXSW) Festival in Austin, Texas on Sunday, NASA announced the release of a new software application based on an algorithm created by a NASA challenge that could increase new asteroid discoveries by citizen astronomers, according to a press release from NASA Headquarters.
The Asteroid Data Hunter (available for download here) was part of NASA's Asteroid Grand Challenge, a contest series in partnership with Planetary Resources of Redmond, Wash. under a Space Act Agreement. Images taken of the Milky Way's main belt asteroids between Mars and Jupiter analyzed using the software resulted in a 15 percent increase in new asteroid identification, according to the press release.
"The Asteroid Grand Challenge is seeking non-traditional partnerships to bring the citizen science and space enthusiast community into NASA's work," said Jason Kessler, program executive for NASA's Asteroid Grand Challenge, according to the press release. "The Asteroid Data Hunter challenge has been successful beyond our hopes, creating something that makes a tangible difference to asteroid hunting astronomers and highlights the possibility for more people to play a role in protecting our planet."
The data hunter challenge used data provided by the Minor Planet Center (MPC) at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. as well as images provided by the Catalina Sky Survey, run by the University of Arizona.
"We applaud all the participants in the Asteroid Data Hunter challenge," said Chris Lewicki, president and chief engineer at Planetary Resources, according to the press release. "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. It has been exciting for our team to work with NASA on this project, and we also look forward to future space-based systems leveraging these results."
"The beauty of such archives is that the data doesn't grow stale, and with novel approaches, techniques and algorithms, they can be harvested for new information," said Jose Luis Galache of the MPC, according to the press release. "The participants of the Asteroid Data Hunter challenge did just that, probing observations of the night sky for new asteroids that might have slipped through the software cracks the first time the images were analyzed. Moreover, this software can now be used to analyze new images and is available to any observer who wants to use it. The Minor Planet Center applauds these efforts to provide superior tools to all, and looks forward to receiving new asteroid observations generated with them."
From the press release: "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.
"Through NASA's asteroid initiative (https://www.nasa.gov/asteroidinitiative), the agency seeks to enhance its ongoing work in the identification and characterization of near-Earth objects for further scientific investigation. This work includes locating potentially hazardous asteroids and identifying those viable for redirection to a stable lunar orbit for future exploration by astronauts using NASA's Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft. The Asteroid Grand Challenge, one part of the asteroid initiative, expands the agency's efforts beyond traditional boundaries and encourages partnerships and collaboration with a variety of organizations.
"The algorithm contests were managed and executed by NASA's Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI). CoECI was established at the request of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to advance NASA's open innovation efforts and extend that expertise to other federal agencies. CoECI uses the NASA Tournament Lab (NTL) for its advanced algorithmic and software development contests. Through its contract with the Crowd Innovation Lab at Harvard University, NTL uses Appirio's Crowdsourcing platform powered by Topcoder to enable a community of more than 750,000 designers, developers and data scientists to create the most innovative, efficient and optimized solutions for specific, real-world challenges faced by NASA. Data storage of the Catalina Sky Survey data was provided by Amazon Web Services."
