NASA Planetary Resources

November 23, 2013 by staff

NASA Planetary Resources, An artist’s conception shows the asteroid Apophis passing near Earth.
People have been putting quarters into “Asteroid” video games since 1979, but NASA and Planetary Resources are partnering up to create 21st-century asteroid contests that could result in payoffs for the players.

The venture was announced Thursday during NASA’s Asteroid Initiative Ideas Synthesis Workshop in Houston. NASA says it’s the first partnership associated with its Asteroid Grand Challenge, which is aimed at improving the space agency’s ability to identify and cope with rogue asteroids.

The asteroid algorithm challenge will build upon Planetary Resources’ pre-existing plans to work with Zooniverse and the Adler Planetarium to crowdsource the detection of potentially hazardous asteroids.

That “Asteroid Zoo” project is due to launch next year. Planetary Resources, a commercial asteroid-mining venture based in Bellevue, Wash., promised to set up Asteroid Zoo as a stretch goal at the end of its $1.5 million Kickstarter campaign.

Asteroid Zoo is modeled on the Zooniverse platform’s other citizen-science projects, including Galaxy Zoo and Planet Hunters. Internet users will be enlisted to scan through 3 million images from the Catalina Sky Survey and look for visual characteristics associated with near-Earth asteroids.

NASA Planetary Resources