IS NASA More Worried Than Ever About Asteroids ?

NASA Wants to Crowdsource Asteroid Locations

Love Armageddon? Now you can participate in the collection of asteroid data

Last month the US space agency announced it would begin working with Planetary Resources Inc. to expand its ability to detect asteroids.

Founded by space entrepreneurs Peter Diamandis and Eric Anderson to extract minerals and other resources from nearby asteroids, Planetary Resources has already experimented with the internet’s ability to bring people together. It used Kickstarter to fund the development of a satellite telescope to find asteroids and planets—and also take “space selfies” of its backers. The company also worked with Zooniverse, a citizen science group, to develop a game that lets anyone help hunt through sky survey data for unmapped asteroids.

Now NASA has asked Planetary Resources to expand upon that game, developing contests that challenge programmers to build software that can pick asteroids out of the 3 million images in the Catalina Sky Survey. Winners will receive cash prizes funded by NASA. For their part, Planetary Resources hopes the contest generates fresh data on the location of the asteroids it hopes to mine.

I wish I had the skills to build this kind of software, but I don`t

I think NASA is more worried than ever about asteroid detection, don´t you think so ? ...

Earth has high risk of asteroid impact

Smaller asteroids can be far more dangerous than previously believed

Asteroid hit rate is far higher than previous thought

reply to post by CosmicDude


Prior to Shoemaker-Levy slamming into Jupiter, there were more people working in a single MacDonalds than there were on government payroll actively looking for asteroids that were a threat to Earth.

Increased awarness by everyone is welcomed, and the more people are looking (people as in amateurs, professionals and space agencies) the better chance of spotting something that could be bad for us.

Even if all we can do is determine impact point on Earth, at least we can try to warn people so they can evacuate (hopefully). That's better than being completely caught with our pants down.

CosmicDude
I think NASA is more worried than ever about asteroid detection, don´t you think so ? ...

Sure, but that comes with our increased awareness of the potential damage from an impact.

25 years ago, nobody had today's awareness of the magnitude of the damage an impact event could cause. Maybe they had some ideas of the immediate localized damage -- i.e., the crater itself and the destruction at the site of impact, but we knew very little about the GLOBAL short-term and long-term damage certain impacts could bring.

As science learned more about the full effects of impacts (such as from the Shoemaker-Levy 9 event, as ErikTheAwful mentioned above), we as a species became more concerned about those impacts.


It's like 19th century surgeons becoming aware of the idea of germs. After Louis Pasteur promoted the ideas that germs can cause infections, surgeons begun to worry about germs during surgery. It's not like the threat didn't exist prior to that -- surgeons were simply unaware of the threat.

reply to post by CosmicDude

Why would I need cash prize if I discovered, let's say, an ELE asteroid?

eriktheawful
reply to post by CosmicDude

 

Prior to Shoemaker-Levy slamming into Jupiter, there were more people working in a single MacDonalds than there were on government payroll actively looking for asteroids that were a threat to Earth.

Increased awarness by everyone is welcomed, and the more people are looking (people as in amateurs, professionals and space agencies) the better chance of spotting something that could be bad for us.

Even if all we can do is determine impact point on Earth, at least we can try to warn people so they can evacuate (hopefully). That's better than being completely caught with our pants down.

I don't think I can add to that, the more the merrier.

zilebeliveunknown
reply to post by CosmicDude

 

Why would I need cash prize if I discovered, let's say, an ELE asteroid?

LOL, that was funny ...well, you could always buy an Italian silk suit, the best bottle of champagne and die with style

reply to post by CosmicDude


Worried, or simply being more aware of NEOs? Besides, it's a good opportinity to get more funding from the government.

reply to post by CosmicDude


Don't be such a worry guts.
The European Space Agency are also on the job:-

www.esa.int...