NASA Welcomes Citizen Scientists to become 'Asteroid Hunters' [VIDEO]

NASA announced the launch of the  'Asteroid Data hunter' contest series Monday, inviting citizen scientists to participate and develop improved algorithms to track asteroids.

The space agency's Asteroid Data Hunter contest series, conducted in partnership with Planetary Resources Inc, Belleuve, has set a $35,000 reward for improved algorithms that will help identify  asteroids in images snapped by ground-based telescopes.

The first Asteroid Grand Challenge Contest is set to begin March 17, 2014. To get more details regarding the contest, the participants can create an account in the contest series website and study the rules and different phases of the contest series that will run till August.

"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."

The winning solution must enhance the sensitivity of detection, lower the number of false positives, overlook the imperfection in data and run effectively on all computer systems, the space agency explained.

"Protecting the planet from the threat of asteroid impact means first knowing where they are," said Jenn Gustetic, prizes and challenges program executive. "By opening up the search for asteroids, we are harnessing the potential of innovators and makers and citizen scientists everywhere to help solve this global challenge."

According to Chirs Lewicki, president and chief engineer of the asteroid mining company, Planetary Resources Inc, the current initiative is aimed at detecting asteroids, which are just one percent of the estimated cosmic objects that orbit the Sun. But this contest will increase both quantity and knowledge of asteroids that pose a threat to Earth and human inhabitants.

With this initiative NASA plans to enhance its current work of identifying and characterization of near Earth-objects for further investigations.