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HONG KONG: Space is gigantic; even for the people whose job it is to know space inside out, it can be too much. So, with that problem in mind, NASA released a desktop application this week so that amateur astronomers can help them hunt down asteroids.
According to Engadget’s report on March 16, the organization hopes that by using the algorithm in the app, the general public can help piece together the different efforts of the world’s space agencies and hopefully create a universal picture of what’s really out there.
The program was really born last year, when NASA launched its Asteroid Data Hunter challenge at South by Southwest. The contest was designed to help create a better way to detect and identify asteroids through telescopes on the ground. Thus, the algorithm was born of winning solutions from various citizen scientists.
Using the algorithm, an amateur astronomer can gaze the skies looking for new pieces of rock in space, but they can also determine if the rock they spot has already been identified. Already, NASA has reported a 15 percent increase in the number of asteroids that have been positively identified and that was before the desktop application was even released.
