Discover Asteroids for NASA with This Free App

Now everybody will be able to help NASA by identifying new asteroids for them. Asteroid tracker desktop software has been released by the space agency today at the southwest today. This software has been released in collaboration with the Planetary Resources, which is an asteroid mining company. This conjunction happened through an online competition.

The new Asteroid Tracker Software: 

Reports suggest that this software has the ability to run on any standards PC and MAC. The software will be able to capture images from a telescope and in turn run it through an algorithm and thereby determine as to why some of the celestial bodies are on par and consistent with the asteroid behaviour.

Asteroid Data Hunter App: 

The Data Hunter app enabled with the Asteroid tracker software can be easily installed on any MAC computer or personal computer. The Online competition, which resulted in the development of the new app, was ended in December. This hunter app, however, requires the astronomers to have a little experience about the astronomy to operate it efficiently. Any original images captured from this new app can be reported out to Minor Planet Centre for further confirmation. This app can be downloaded on Topcoder.

The New Algorithm: 

The space agency claims that this new algorithm has been their biggest achievement. The agency reported that compared to the previous version, this new algorithm has the capacity to spot 15% more asteroids in the asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter. Another advantage of the algorithm is not only limited to the identification of asteroids in the space, but it can also endeavour to match these asteroids with the NEOs (near-Earth objects). Any amateur astronomer by means of this new app will be able to examine images which have been taken from the telescopes. These amateur astronomers can also send any of these images which match with the asteroid to be considered as part of the NASA database.

Benefits of the new algorithm: 

NASA seems to have been struggling with the increasing number of NEOs swirling around the earth and this new algorithm can be quite useful for handling this complicated situation. Through this efficient algorithm, the space agency will be able to track down possible asteroids which can be threatening to our Earth. Through this new app and contribution of astronomers, the agency will be able to sort out possible candidates for future missions related to asteroids.

NASA has been very much interested in locating space rocks that can be harmful to Earth from a very long time. The space agency is also hopeful of redirecting an asteroid and further placing it in moon’s orbit. This is expected to happen in the next few decades, post which the agency is hoping to send astronauts to further study this space. They are planning to carry out this process by means of Orion spacecraft as well as the space launch system. The space agency understands that there is immense mineral wealth in a single asteroid.