NASA Mission Wants Amateur Astronomers to Target Asteroids
A new NASA outreach project will enlist the help of amateur astronomers to discover near-Earth objects (NEOs) and study their characteristics. NEOs are asteroids with orbits that occasionally bring them close to the Earth. Starting today, a new citizen science project called "Target Asteroids!" will support NASA's Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security - Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission objectives to improve basic scientific understanding of NEOs. OSIRIS-REx is scheduled for launch in 2016 and will study material from an asteroid. Source
Target Asteroids! is an opportunity for amateur astronomers to participate in a long-term citizen science project that will contribute to basic scientific understanding of near-Earth objects (NEOs).