NASA software to map and monitor the asteroids – Focus

Working for NASA is the dream of many, but few actually: emulate Easton Lachappelle and his robotic hand is not something to everyone. But now you can help the institution American space directly from your home computer, and somehow save the world.

The agency has in fact made public Date Asteroid Hunter , a software for monitoring the asteroid to download on your computer: any curious of the sky, or avid amateur astronomer can, thanks to this software, send to NASA digital photographs taken with your telescope. The intention space agency, the images will form a huge archive that will compare images of small portions of the sky taken at time intervals also very short, to study and monitor the asteroid belt (between Mars and Jupiter) and the orbit of the large number of asteroids of all sizes passing through the solar system and in the vicinity of the Earth. The process of data collection, identification and monitoring is called Asteroid Grand Challenge.

How does it work. The software, developed in collaboration with Planetary Resources within a competition online, runs on Apple computers and Windows and works hand in hand with the telescope’s home. After download on your computer, an algorithm monitors the images from the telescope and keeps track of the trajectories of celestial bodies, identifying those who behave like asteroids.

Algorithm detective . The key element of the application is exactly the algorithm, programmed to identify asteroids with an efficiency better than 15% compared to the one used so far. In addition to recognizing the belt asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, the program is able to compare them with other objects inserted into the database of the agency, or the so-called NEOs ( Near-Earth Objects ), asteroids they move around our planet. Once recognized an asteroid, the user can analyze it on his computer with the application and send the information to the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.

Hunting rocks threatening. How do you explain the brilliant video in English you find below, after the work done by amateur astronomers pc (link to software and user’s guide) the process continues on the supercomputer at NASA, which process the data to track the orbits of asteroids, analyze measurements, weight, shape and composition and possibly develop strategies in case of risk of impact on our planet, as is done for example in the base Aquarius (Florida, USA).

NASA explains that the operation also aims to look in the audience possible candidates for future space missions that will aim to intervene in the path of potentially threatening objects, as the asteroid crashed in Russia at the beginning of 2013.

Founded in 2013 with the support of the White House, the initiative provides for 2019 a test mission that will also have an economic impact, that of Planetary Resources, working in the project to exploit the mineral resources of the asteroids.