NASA Seeks Help to Hunt Asteroids That Pose Threat to Earth

NASA has announced the Asteroid Grand Challenge that focuses on hunting all asteroids that pose a threat to human populations. This challenge not only identifies dangerous near-Earth asteroids but will also design a way to deal with these asteroids.

"NASA already is working to find asteroids that might be a threat to our planet, and while we have found 95 percent of the large asteroids near the Earth's orbit, we need to find all those that might be a threat to Earth," NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said in a press release. "This Grand Challenge is focused on detecting and characterizing asteroids and learning how to deal with potential threats. We will also harness public engagement, open innovation and citizen science to help solve this global problem."

Earlier, NASA had announced plans to redirect an asteroid to the lunar orbit in 2017 with the help of a solar-powered spacecraft and later planned on sending astronauts to the asteroid's surface to know more about it. All these plans are a part of the Asteroid Initiative.

The Asteroid Initiative Request for Information that was released by NASA invites scientists, academics, engineers and other civilians from around the world to work together on NASA's Asteroid initiative that aims at identifying asteroids that pose a threat. The space agency requests for information on different ways to detect the asteroids and how to change its orbit with the help of spacecraft and how an astronaut can land on an asteroid.

All the inputs for the initiative have to be completed in 30 days as on July 27 NASA will conduct an online forum where all responses will be collated and this will culminate in an industry workshop.

Tom Kalil, deputy director for technology and innovation at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, praised the efforts of NASA saying, "I applaud NASA for issuing this Grand Challenge because finding asteroid threats, and having a plan for dealing with them, needs to be an all-hands-on-deck effort."

From the $18 billion proposed budget NASA has for 2014, it plans on keeping $105 million just for the asteroid mission.