--- title: NASA Announces First 'Grand Challenge' Contest to Help Find Asteroids description: NASA is enlisting lay people to help locate asteroids as part of its new Grand Challenge canonical: https://time.com/19329/nasa-asteroid-data-hunter-grand-challenge/ author: Maya Rhodan article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-03-11T00:40:30.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T06:41:38.007Z article:section: Science og:title: NASA Announces First 'Grand Challenge' Contest to Help Find Asteroids og:description: NASA is enlisting lay people to help locate asteroids as part of its new Grand Challenge og:url: https://time.com/19329/nasa-asteroid-data-hunter-grand-challenge/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt40b34c2f218832f8/6986843513c79f05a1190e2d/asteroid_01.jpg?branch=production&width=1080&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: asteroid og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: NASA Announces First 'Grand Challenge' Contest to Help Find Asteroids twitter:description: NASA is enlisting lay people to help locate asteroids as part of its new Grand Challenge twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt40b34c2f218832f8/6986843513c79f05a1190e2d/asteroid_01.jpg?branch=production&width=1080&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # WANTED: Asteroid Hunters by [Maya Rhodan](https://time.com/author/maya-rhodan/) ## Maya Rhodan Mar 11, 2014 12:40 AM UTC  NASA/ESA/D. Jewitt/UCLA by [Maya Rhodan](https://time.com/author/maya-rhodan/) ## Maya Rhodan Mar 11, 2014 12:40 AM UTC NASA is offering $35,000 in [awards](http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/march/be-an-asteroid-hunter-in-nasas-first-asteroid-grand-challenge-contest-series/#.Ux5OND46Up8) to citizen scientists who can help locate asteroids that pose a threat to earth. The “Asteroid Data Hunter” contest is the first in NASA’s “Grand Challenge” series announced in [June](http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2013/jun/HQ%5F13-188%5FAsteroid%5FGrand%5FChallenge.html#.Ux5WgD46Up8) that is centered on locating asteroid threats to human populations. Entrants will compete to create algorithms that can improve the images ground-based telescopes capture of asteroids. The winning algorithim must, “increase the detection sensitivity, minimize the number of false positives, ignore imperfections in the data, and run effectively on all computer systems.” Details of the contest, which will take place over the next six months, were revealed at the South by Southwest conference in Austin on Monday as well as [online](http://www.topcoder.com/asteroids/asteroiddatahunter/). Registration starts March 17. “Current asteroid detection initiatives are only tracking one percent of the estimated objects that orbit the Sun,” said Chris Lewicki, President and Chief Engineer of the asteroid mining company Planetary Resources, Inc., which is partnering with NASA on the contest. “Applying distributed algorithm and coding skills to the extensive NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey data set will yield important insights into the state of the art in detecting asteroids.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/19329/nasa-asteroid-data-hunter-grand-challenge/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/19329/nasa-asteroid-data-hunter-grand-challenge/"},"headline":"WANTED: Asteroid Hunters","datePublished":"2014-03-11T00:40:30.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T06:41:38.007Z","description":"NASA is enlisting lay people to help locate asteroids as part of its new Grand Challenge","url":"https://time.com/19329/nasa-asteroid-data-hunter-grand-challenge/","keywords":["NASA","Space","asteroids"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt40b34c2f218832f8/6986843513c79f05a1190e2d/asteroid_01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Maya Rhodan","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/maya-rhodan/"}],"articleSection":"Science","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt40b34c2f218832f8/6986843513c79f05a1190e2d/asteroid_01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"asteroid","caption":"asteroid","creditText":"NASA/ESA/D. 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