Interested in protecting the Earth from an asteroid-doomsday scenario? If so, NASA has just the project for you: find all potential asteroid threats to the human population, and come up with a way to deal with it.
NASA's Asteroid Grand Challenge aims to bring together experts (and amateurs) from all walks of life. Together, NASA hopes to not only finish cataloguing near-Earth asteroids, the agency hopes to involve the public in an ambitious public research project. Grand Challenges, according to NASA, are President Obama's way of capturing the public's attention and utilizing it towards a common goal.
"NASA already is working to find asteroids that might be a threat to our planet, and while we have found 95 percent of the large asteroids near the Earth's orbit, we need to find all those that might be a threat to Earth," said NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver. "This Grand Challenge is focused on detecting and characterizing asteroids and learning how to deal with potential threats. We will also harness public engagement, open innovation and citizen science to help solve this global problem."
NASA is putting out request for information to potential partners to submit whatever data they have already collected and offer solutions to a possible doomsday scenario. After receiving submissions for 30 days, NASA will hold an industry workshop based on the information and solutions received in September.
"I applaud NASA for issuing this Grand Challenge because finding asteroid threats, and having a plan for dealing with them, needs to be an all-hands-on-deck effort," said Tom Kalil, deputy director for technology and innovation at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. "The efforts of private-sector partners and our citizen scientists will augment the work NASA already is doing to improve near-Earth object detection capabilities."
The Asteroid Grand Challenge will complement NASA's goal to send a manned mission to an asteroid by 2025.