NASA proposes a reward of 35 k$ for an asteroid hunter software

Dear followers and readers,

the danger for the Earth planet induced by hazardous asteroids is a field which interests strongly all the space agency. NASA is used to detect, track and characterizes space comets and hazardous asteroids. A dedicated program called Near-Earth Object Observation, also named Spaceguard has been created by the space agency in order to present dramatic event. For this reason +NASA decided to propose a reward of 35 k€ for an asteroid hunter software.

During the three months of 2014, couple hazardous asteroids passed close to Earth such as the asteroid called 2014 DX110 last week. This asteroid was quite small, around 30 meters of diameter. However, in February 2014, an other wider asteroid was observed close to Earth, 2000 EM26: this one was really wide, around 270 meters of diameter, the equivalent of 3 football field.

With the number of asteroids growing, the US space agency would mine the talent from the general public. NASA hopes to spot dangerous space rocks such as the one that saw off the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. In order to increase the interest of people, NASA is offering up to $35,000 over the next six months to anyone who is able develop computer code that can identify life-threatening asteroids.

The challenge started by NASA consists in developing significantly improved algorithms to identify asteroids in images captured by ground-based telescopes.
"The winning solution must increase the detection sensitivity, minimize the number of false positives, ignore imperfections in the data, and run effectively on all computer systems" defined NASA.

Stay tuned and try your chance to save Earth !