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Coders, NASA Will Pay You to Help Hunt Down Asteroids

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NASA is calling on coders to help in the hunt for potentially dangerous asteroids. Over the next six months, the agency will be offering a total of $35,000 in prizes in a contest series that aims to improve the way telescopes detect, track, and analyze incoming space rocks.

NASAs Near Earth Object Observation Program already harnesses telescopes around the world to be on the lookout for asteroids the fly past our planet. But the vast volumes of data created cant be inspected by hand. Computers are helpful, but their algorithms are estimated to be only about 80 to 90 percent reliable and could be missing thousands of objects every year. According to NASA, winning solutions in their contests will increase the detection sensitivity, minimize the number of false positives, ignore imperfections in the data, and run effectively on all computers.

The Asteroid Data Hunter contest series, which begins on Mar. 17 and runs through August, is being run with asteroid mining company Planetary Resources. Both it and NASA have a vested interest in finding asteroids NASA wants to send a human crew to visit one in the next decade and Planetary Resources hopes to exploit their metals and water for profit. Those interested in coding algorithms to help can sign up at the NASA Tournament Lab.

Video: NASAgovVideo/Youtube

Adam is a Wired Science staff writer. He lives in Oakland, Ca near a lake and enjoys space, physics, and other sciency things.

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Coders, NASA Will Pay You to Help Hunt Down Asteroids

NASA: There Is 'Probably' No 'Nemesis' Death Star Beyond Pluto

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Nasa has announced that there is almost certainly not a giant, dark 'Nemesis' star lurking at the edge of our Solar System.

"Probably".

It has long been theorised - though only by a fringe of the astronomy community - that a massive, unseen celestial body exists beyond the orbit of Pluto.

Known as 'Nemesis', or Planet X, the theories attempt to explain geological studies which suggest oddly regular mass extinctions on Earth.

Above: A nearby star stands out in red in this image from the Second Generation Digitized Sky Survey.

The idea is that this large star or planet might occasionally rush through bands of comets at the edge of the solar system, and send them hurtling towards Earth.

It's not a widely-held belief, though. And now a full-sky sweep by the space agency's Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has found "no evidence" that such a thing exists.

Nasa said it is now sure there is no object larger than Jupiter beyond Pluto to a distance of 26,000 'AU' (astronomical units) - where the distance to the Sun from Earth, or 93 million miles, is one AU.

"The outer solar system probably does not contain a large gas giant planet, or a small, companion star," said Kevin Luhman of the Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds at Penn State University.

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NASA: There Is 'Probably' No 'Nemesis' Death Star Beyond Pluto

NASA Kepler telescope discovers 715 new planets

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Nasa animations illustrate planet Kepler-16b, discovered by Nasa's Kepler mission, circling two stars. (Courtesy Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory, no sound)

NASA has announced a torrent of new planet discoveries, hailing a "bonanza" of 715 worlds now known outside the solar system thanks to the Kepler space telescope's planet-hunting mission.

A new method for verifying potential planets led to the volume of new discoveries from Kepler, which aims to help humans search for other worlds that may be like Earth.

"What we have been able to do with this is strike the mother lode, get a veritable exoplanet bonanza," said Jack Lissauer, a planetary scientist at NASA.

This artist's impression illustrates Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. Photo: NASA

"We have almost doubled just today the number of planets known to humanity," he said.

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The 715 newly verified planets are orbiting 305 different stars.

The latest announcement brings the number of known planets tobetween 1500 and 1800, depending on which of the five main extra-solar planet-discovery catalogues is used.

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NASA Kepler telescope discovers 715 new planets


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