Be an Asteroid Hunter in NASA's First Asteroid Grand Challenge Contest Series
NASA’s Asteroid Data Hunter contest series will offer $35,000 in awards over
the next six months to citizen scientists who develop improved algorithms that
can be used to identify asteroids.
This contest series is being conducted in partnership with Planetary
Resources Inc. of Bellevue, Wash. The first contest in the series will kick off
on March 17. Prior to the kick off, competitors can create an account on the
contest series website and learn more about the rules and different phases of
the contest series by going to:
Managed by the NASA Tournament Lab, the entire contest series runs through
August and is the first contest series contributing to the agency’s Asteroid
Grand Challenge.
“For the past three years, NASA has been learning and advancing the ability
to leverage distributed algorithm and coding skills through the NASA Tournament
Lab to solve tough problems," said Jason Crusan, NASA Tournament Lab director.
"We are now applying our experience with algorithm contests to helping protect
the planet from asteroid threats through image analysis.”
The Asteroid Data Hunter contest series challenges participants to develop
significantly improved algorithms to identify asteroids in images captured by
ground-based telescopes. The winning solution must increase the detection
sensitivity, minimize the number of false positives, ignore imperfections in the
data, and run effectively on all computer systems.
“Protecting the planet from the threat of asteroid impact means first knowing
where they are,” said Jenn Gustetic, Prizes and Challenges Program executive.
“By opening up the search for asteroids, we are harnessing the potential of
innovators and makers and citizen scientists everywhere to help solve this
global challenge.”
Gustetic and Jason Kessler, Grand Challenges Program executive, will host a
panel March 10 at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas titled “Are
We Smarter than the Dinosaurs?” to talk about how open innovation can
meaningfully engage people in discussions on and research into space exploration
and help us solve problems of global importance. They will provide an outline of
the Asteroid Data Hunter contest series and other efforts to detect asteroid
threats, as well as ideas for mitigating these threats.
“Current asteroid detection initiatives are only tracking one percent of the
estimated objects that orbit the Sun. We are excited to partner with NASA in
this contest to help increase the quantity and knowledge about asteroids that
are potential threats, human destinations, or resource rich.” said Chris
Lewicki, President and Chief Engineer of the asteroid mining company Planetary
Resources, Inc. “Applying distributed algorithm and coding skills to the
extensive NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey data set will yield important insights
into the state of the art in detecting asteroids.”
Through NASA's asteroid initiative, 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. 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 are 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 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 Harvard Business
School in association with Harvard's Institute of Quantitative Social Science,
NTL uses the topcoder platform to enable a community of more than 600,000
designers, developers and data scientists to create the most innovative,
efficient and optimized solutions for specific, real-world challenges faced by
NASA.
For more information on NASA's Center of Excellence for Collaborative
Innovation, visit:
For more information on Planetary Resources, Inc., visit:
For more information on NASA's asteroid initiative, visit:
No comments:
Post a Comment