NASA Offers Bounty For Improved Asteroid Detection Algorithms 38
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Dara Kerr reports at CNET that NASA is launching an 'Asteroid Data Hunter' contest to inspire the creation of algorithms that 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. 'Current asteroid detection initiatives are only tracking one percent of the estimated objects that orbit the Sun,' says Chris Lewicki. 'We are excited to partner with NASA in this contest to help increase the quantity and knowledge about asteroids that are potential threats, human destinations, or resource rich.' NASA's goal is to discover those unknown asteroids and then track and characterize them. For the contest, citizen scientists will be allowed to study images taken from ground-based telescopes to see if they can develop improved algorithms for identifying asteroids. If dangerous asteroids are found, NASA could determine if they'd be viable for a re-direction into a lunar orbit. 'For the past three years, NASA has been learning and advancing the ability to leverage distributed algorithm and coding skills through the NASA Tournament Lab to solve tough problems,' said Jason Crusan, NASA Tournament Lab director. 'We are now applying our experience with algorithm contests to helping protect the planet from asteroid threats through image analysis.'"
$35,000 split x ways? (Score:2, Insightful)
> NASA will give away $35,000 in awards to competition winners
Big spenders! This really motivates me to get started.
Am I the only one... ? (Score:4, Insightful)
... Who thinks this whole article is written like a freaking marketing PR announcement?
I mean: "We are excited to partner with NASA" [...] "NASA has been learning and advancing the ability to leverage distributed algorithm and coding skills" [...] etc.
Don't misunderstand me: the idea is great and, if they can detect more asteroids, faster, and with a better precision, we will all be better off in the long term. But I am just tired of these shockingly stupid buzzwords ("excited", "advancing", "leveraging", "coding skills", yadda, yadda, yadda).
And get off my lawn!
Re:Stop crowdsourcing work for free (Score:5, Insightful)
I think they have intelligent people. What they're looking for is some outside perspective.
When you've been staring at your own solution for years and years, it's good to have someone make you question it once in a while. They will no doubt get plenty of rookie and novice suggestions, the easy stuff they've long ago solved. They may even get some of the suggestions that took them a long time to understand and develop. What they're hoping for is something completely different. Maybe some grad student working on a new form of video compression will spot similarities that can be applied. Who knows?