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]

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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

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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.
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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?
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- 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.
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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
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