{"id":8180,"date":"2014-06-24T23:44:08","date_gmt":"2014-06-25T03:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=8180"},"modified":"2014-06-24T23:52:22","modified_gmt":"2014-06-25T03:52:22","slug":"asteroid-zoo-a-new-citizen-science-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=8180","title":{"rendered":"Asteroid Zoo: A new citizen science project"},"content":{"rendered":"

An announcement from\u00a0Planetary Resource<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Zooniverse<\/a>:<\/p>\n

PLANETARY RESOURCES AND ZOONIVERSE LAUNCH
\nASTEROID ZOO, <\/strong>A CITIZEN SCIENCE ASTEROID CHALLENGE <\/strong><\/p>\n

Asteroid Zoo Engages Public in Search for Near Earth Asteroids that are
\n<\/em>Potentially Hazardous, Resource Rich or Possible Human Destinations<\/em><\/p>\n

Redmond, Washington \u2013 June 24, 2014 \u2013 <\/strong>Planetary Resources<\/a>, the asteroid mining company, and Zooniverse<\/a> today launched Asteroid Zoo (www.asteroidzoo.org<\/a>), empowering students, citizen scientists and space enthusiasts to aid in the search for previously undiscovered asteroids. The program allows the public to join the search for Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) of interest to scientists, NASA and asteroid miners, while helping to train computers to better find them in the future.<\/p>\n

Asteroid Zoo joins the Zooniverse\u2019s family of more than 25 citizen science projects! It will enable participants to search terabytes of imaging data collected by Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) for undiscovered asteroids in a fun, game-like process from their personal computers or devices. The public\u2019s findings will be used by scientists to develop advanced automated asteroid-searching technology for telescopes on Earth and in space, including Planetary Resources\u2019 ARKYD.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith Asteroid Zoo, we hope to extend the effort to discover asteroids beyond astronomers and harness the wisdom of crowds to provide a real benefit to Earth,\u201d said Chris Lewicki, President and Chief Engineer, Planetary Resources, Inc. \u201cFurthermore, we\u2019re excited to introduce this program as a way to thank the thousands of people who supported Planetary Resources through Kickstarter. This is the first of many initiatives we\u2019ll introduce as a result of the campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n

Planetary Resources\u2019 partnership with Zooniverse was announced in the midst of the company\u2019s successful Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign<\/a> for\u00a0ARKYD<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 the world\u2019s first space telescope for public use. Last year, Planetary Resources exceeded its original US$1M goal and raised over US$1.5M with more than 18,000 people from around the globe pledging their support, ranking Planetary Resources\u2019 effort among the top 25 campaigns in Kickstarter history. \u00a0It was then the organizations decided to create Asteroid Zoo, leveraging the public\u2019s interest in space and asteroid detection. \u00a0The challenge is made possible, in part, by a grant from Planetary Resources to Adler Planetarium, where the Zooniverse has a large development team. Also contributing to the project is Amazon.com by hosting the CSS imaging data on its servers as a public data set.<\/p>\n

Chris Lintott, astronomer at the University of Oxford and Zooniverse Principal Investigator said, \u201cZooniverse believes in doing projects that make authentic contributions to science. So, in addition to being excited to share the data from this massive asteroid hunt with the whole astronomical community, we\u2019re especially pleased that Asteroid Zoo will also focus on improving machine learning solutions to finding asteroids. In the future, we hope to use the classifications provided by volunteers to improve automated searching and suggest new methods by which machines might take up the strain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of all the asteroids ever discovered, 93 percent were found in only the last 15 years and nearly half of the NEAs were discovered by CSS. Approximately 620,000 objects are currently tracked in our Solar System \u2013 representing only one percent of the estimated 60 million asteroids orbiting the Sun. Using Asteroid Zoo, anyone with a computer or mobile device can now join in the search to track unknown asteroids. While over 90 percent of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids are known to scientists right now, less than one percent of asteroids smaller than 100m have been found. These asteroids are still capable of regional disaster, such as massive damage to a metro city.<\/p>\n

NASA has also listed planetary defense as a top priority, having signed a Space Act Agreement with Planetary Resources last year to design and implement crowdsourcing algorithm challenges in the effort to detect, track and characterize NEAs.\u00a0This algorithm challenge, called Asteroid Data Hunters, has completed phase 1 and is approaching the start of the next marathon match. It is anticipated that the data set gathered by Asteroid Zoo will feed into future NASA challenges. Data compiled and used in Asteroid Zoo and Asteroid Data Hunters will both be open-sourced and publicly available.<\/p>\n

About Zooniverse<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Zooniverse is home to the Internet’s largest, most popular and most successful citizen science projects, in topics from astronomy to zoology. It began in 2007 with the launch of Galaxy Zoo, and includes projects such as Old Weather, Planet Hunters, Condor Watch, and Sunspotter. The Zooniverse and the suite of projects it contains is produced, maintained and developed by the Citizen Science Alliance. The member institutions of the CSA work with many academic and other partners around the world to produce projects that use the efforts and ability of volunteers to help scientists and researchers deal with the flood of data that confronts them.<\/p>\n

Follow the Zooniverse on Twitter @the_zooniverse and for more information, please visit\u00a0www.zooniverse.org\/about<\/a>.<\/p>\n

About Planetary Resources<\/strong><\/p>\n

Planetary Resources, Inc. was founded in 2009 by Eric Anderson and Dr. Peter H. Diamandis. Our vision is to establish a new paradigm for resource utilization that will bring the Solar System within humanity\u2019s economic sphere of influence. The company will conduct low-cost robotic space exploration beginning with the ARKYD Series of space missions that will identify the most commercially viable near-Earth asteroids. These initial missions will assist the company in enabling the retrieval of raw materials from these select asteroids, including water, precious metals and more.<\/p>\n

Planetary Resources is financed by industry-launching visionaries, three of whom include Google\u2019s CEO Larry Page & Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt; and Ross Perot, Jr., Chairman of Hillwood and The Perot Group; who are committed to expanding the world\u2019s resource base so humanity can continue to grow and prosper for centuries to come. Some of the company\u2019s partners and advisors include the Bechtel Corporation; film maker and explorer James Cameron; former Chief of Staff, United States Air Force General T. Michael Moseley (Ret.); and Sara Seager, Ph.D., Professor of Planetary Science and Physics at MIT. Members of the company\u2019s technical staff have worked on every recent U.S. Mars lander including Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity, and include other key non-aerospace and safety-critical disciplines. For more information, please visit www.planetaryresources.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Follow us on Twitter<\/a>, Facebook<\/a>, Google+<\/a> and YouTube<\/a> for all the latest updates!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An announcement from\u00a0Planetary Resource\u00a0and\u00a0Zooniverse: PLANETARY RESOURCES AND ZOONIVERSE LAUNCH ASTEROID ZOO, A CITIZEN SCIENCE ASTEROID CHALLENGE Asteroid Zoo Engages Public in Search for Near Earth Asteroids that are Potentially Hazardous, Resource Rich or Possible Human Destinations Redmond, Washington \u2013 June 24, 2014 \u2013 Planetary Resources, the asteroid mining company, and Zooniverse today launched Asteroid Zoo … Continue reading Asteroid Zoo: A new citizen science project<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[75,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asteroids","category-space-participation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p34aWK-27W","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3044,"url":"https:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=3044","url_meta":{"origin":8180,"position":0},"title":"Asteroid Zoo citizen science program – stretch goal for Planetary Resources Arkyd Kickstarter","author":"TopSpacer","date":"June 27, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Planetary Resources and Zooniverse plan a collaboration - Asteroid Zoo - if the Kickstarter campaign for the\u00a0 ARKYD space telescope for the public reaches $1.7M: Planetary Resources Calls on Citizens of Earth to\u00a0Aid in Planetary Defense Company Announces New Crowdfunding Goal to Create \u201cAsteroid Zoo\u201d for Public to Search for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Asteroids & Comets"","block_context":{"text":"Asteroids & Comets","link":"https:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?cat=75"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5399,"url":"https:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=5399","url_meta":{"origin":8180,"position":1},"title":"Planetary Resources and NASA partnering to crowdsource asteroid detection","author":"TopSpacer","date":"November 22, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Planetary Resources\u00a0\"The Asteroid Mining Company\" has announced a partnership with NASA \u00a0to design and implement crowdsourcing algorithm challenges in the effort to detect, track and characterize near-Earth objects (NEOs).\u00a0 All data compiled and used for these challenges will be open-sourced and publicly available. 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