[meteorite-list] NASA, Planetary Resources Sign Agreement to Crowdsource Asteroid Detection

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 14:22:29 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <201311212222.rALMMTwL000777_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

November 21, 2013

Rachel Kraft/Becky Ramsey
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100/202-358-1694
Rachel.h.kraft at nasa.gov / sarah.ramsey at nasa.gov
     
RELEASE 13-350
     
NASA, Planetary Resources Sign Agreement to Crowdsource Asteroid Detection

NASA and Planetary Resources Inc., of Bellevue, Wash., are partnering to
develop crowd-sourced software solutions to enhance detection of near-Earth
objects using agency-funded data. The agreement is NASA's first partnership
associated with the agency's Asteroid Grand Challenge.

Under a non-reimbursable Space Act Agreement, Planetary Resources will
facilitate the use of NASA-funded sky survey data and help support the
algorithm competition and review results. NASA will develop and manage the
contests and explore use of the best solutions for enhancing existing survey
programs. The first contest is expected to launch early in 2014 based on
Planetary Resources' and Zooniverse's Asteroid Zoo platform currently in
development. The partnership was announced Thursday at NASA's Asteroid
Initiative Ideas Synthesis Workshop in Houston.

"This partnership uses NASA resources in innovative ways and takes advantage
of public expertise to improve identification of potential threats to our
planet," said Lindley Johnson, program executive of NASA's near Earth object
observation program. "This opportunity is one of many efforts we're
undertaking as part of our asteroid initiative."

Through NASA's asteroid initiative, the agency is enhancing its ongoing
efforts to identify and characterize near-Earth objects for scientific
investigation, find asteroids potentially hazardous to Earth and find
candidates viable for redirection to a stable orbit near the moon as a
destination for exploration by astronauts.

"The foundation of the asteroid grand challenge is partnerships like this
one," said Jason Kessler, program executive for the asteroid grand challenge.
"It fits the core purpose of the grand challenge perfectly: find innovative
ways to combine ideas and resources to solve the problem of dealing with
potentially hazardous asteroids."

NASA's efforts capitalizes on activities across the agency's human
exploration, science and space technology efforts

"Asteroids hold the resources necessary to enable a sustainable, even
indefinite presence in space -- for science, commerce and continued
prosperity here on Earth," said Chris Lewicki, president and chief engineer
of Planetary Resources. "By harnessing the public's interest in space and
asteroid detection, we can more quickly identify the potential threats, as
well as the opportunities."

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 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 Sciences, NTL uses the TopCoder platform to enable a community of over
600,000 competitors 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:

http://www.nasa.gov/coeci

For more information on Planetary Resources, visit:

http://www.planetaryresources.com

For more information on NASA's asteroid initiative, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/asteroidinitiative

-end-
Received on Thu 21 Nov 2013 05:22:29 PM PST