DailyDirt: Crowds In Spaaaace...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Tue, Jun 3rd 2014 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Exploring the vastness of space isn't cheap, but it's becoming more accessible as the cost of satellites comes down slowly and data from telescopes is shared widely and freely. Citizen scientists can help advance astronomy in a variety of ways, donating time and/or money to projects that need more help. NASA's budget isn't exactly huge (compared to other parts of the national budget), so space scientists need all the help they can get. Here are just a few links on the wisdom of the crowd contributing to space exploration.

A crowdfunded group of space junkies has revived the International Sun-Earth Explorer 3 (ISEE-3) satellite, which launched in 1978 and was officially suspended in 1998. NASA has turned over control of this old satellite to the ISEE-3 Reboot Project, but the group doesn't have much time to play with the satellite unless it can figure out how to re-fire its engines. [url]
NASA's Be a Martian project is asking citizen scientists to help map the surface of Mars. There's a lot of area to cover with a chance of finding something really, really interesting. [url]
Citizen astronomers could help identify interesting Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) that the New Horizons spacecraft might investigate. The Ice Hunter project ended in early 2012, and out of the 143 KBO candidates identified, none were in range. (Another Ice Investigators project to look for more KBOs is underway, though.) [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: astronomy, citizen scientists, crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, diy space, isee-3, kbo, kuiper belt objects, mars, new horizons, satellite, space exploration, spacecraft
Companies: nasa

4 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 3 Jun 2014 @ 10:56pm

Can nasa solicit crowdfunding?
Maybe if NASA could do its own kickstarter, it might be able to get a man on the moon again.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Lawrence D�Oliveiro, 4 Jun 2014 @ 1:23am

I Wonder What Kind Of Encryption NASA Used...
How does NASA prevent random people from sending unauthorized signals to its spacecraft? Especially old ones like this, and the Pioneer and Voyager probes�nobody had strong encryption back then, certainly nothing that would still be considered strong today. So what�s to prevent someone from taking them over?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
node (profile), 4 Jun 2014 @ 2:23am

Re: I Wonder What Kind Of Encryption NASA Used...
The arecibo radio telescope they used to make contact has a diameter of 1000f(300m), just a little large for my backyard. You need some pretty powerful radio transmitters to be able to reach out there. The money they are collecting goes into buying time on such equipment.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Jun 2014 @ 11:35am

No KBO candidates for New Horizons found yet...
And time is running out:
http://www.nature.com/news/pluto-bound-probe-faces-crisis-1.15261
[ link to this | view in thread ]