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

[Ron Baalke]

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-