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MiniSpaceWorld Design Contest
MiniSpaceWorld aims to create a spectacular scale model world for space flight and astronomy. Light and sound effects, day and night simulations in the different Worlds, historical and modern vehicles in motion, and representation of future life scenes will enrich the visitors’ experience. Under the motto “Space for Everybody”, MiniSpaceWorld will also explicitly feature products [...]
LCROSS Amateur Observation Campaign
A NASA mission to search for water on the moon. The LCROSS mission is going to do this by sending a rocket crashing into the moon causing a big impact and creating a crater, throwing tons of debris and potentially water ice and vapor above the lunar surface. This impact will release materials from the lunar surface that will be analyzed for the presence of hydrated minerals [...]
Regolith Excavation Challenge
The Regolith Excavation Challenge allows citizen inventors to participate by applying their talents to develop innovative solutions and new technologies to efficiently excavate lunar regolith.
The project is designed to promote the development of mechanical designs to excavate lunar regolith. [...]
Global Telescope Network
A project that allows individuals or groups to dedicate some portion of their time to analyzing data taken with other people’s telescopes. The Global Telescope Network is a network of small telescopes around the world for the purpose of supporting the science of NASA and ESA high energy astrophysics missions, including XMM-Newton, Swift and GLAST. These missions are designed to [...]
NASA/NSS Space Settlement Contest
Space settlement needs inexpensive, safe launch systems to deliver thousands, perhaps millions, of people into orbit. Sponsored by NASA Ames Research Center in conjunction with the National Space Society, each spring students (6-12th grade) send their designs for homes in space for judging by NASA engineers and scientists. Individuals, small teams of two to six, and large teams [...]
SETI@home
In 1995, David Gedye proposed doing radio SETI using a virtual supercomputer composed of large numbers of Internet-connected computers, and he organized the SETI@home project to explore this idea. SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is a scientific area whose goal is to detect intelligent life outside Earth. One approach, known as radio SETI, uses radio telescopes to listen [...]
Galaxy Zoo
A citizen science project that needs volunteers to classify images of galaxies taken by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey 2.5-m wide-angle optical telescope. Right now, Galaxy Zoo needs volunteers to review their set of possible merging galaxies. [...]
Open Luna Foundation
A stepped program of robotic missions that seek to return mankind to the lunar surface, and to do it in such a way that it is accessible to everyone. The Open Luna Foundation is open source and invites everyone (hardware providers, writers, wiki-editors, designers, etc.) to contribute and share what you want to do and what science you would like to see done on their wiki. One [...]
Radio JOVE
The Radio JOVE project is a hands-on inquiry-based educational project that allows students, teachers and the general public to learn about radio astronomy by building their own radio telescope from an inexpensive kit and/or using remote radio telescopes through the internet. Radio JOVE students and amateur scientists observe and analyze natural radio emissions of Jupiter, the Sun, [...]
NASA CoLab Island
NASA CoLab Island is a dedicated space in the online virtual world of Second Life. After downloading the Second Life application, you can enter Second Life and visit NASA CoLab Island any time, 24/7.
People or groups with ideas for building space-related 3D projects in Second Life can apply to host their project [...]
Elevator:2010
This project is divided into two challenges: Power Beaming and Tether Strength. The Space Elevator vision will not only further space exploration and knowledge, but has the potential to shape the existential future of the human race for centuries to come. Elevator:2010 is designed to address the “social engineering” of the Space Elevator. Taking their cue from the X-prize, solar car [...]
Google Lunar X Prize
The Google Lunar X PRIZE is a $30 million international competition to safely land a robot on the surface of the Moon, travel 500 meters over the lunar surface, and send images and data back to the Earth. [...]
Vision Workbench
The VW is a general purpose image processing and computer vision library developed by the Autonomous Systems and Robotics (ASR) Area in the Intelligent Systems Division at the NASA Ames Research Center. VW has been publically released under the terms of the NASA Open Source Software Agreement. They are working to establish out a process through which [...]
NASA World Wind
An open source 3D interactive world viewer created by NASA’s Learning Technologies project, released in mid-2004. It is now developed by NASA staff and open source community developers. World Wind lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth. Leveraging Landsat satellite imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data, World Wind lets you experience Earth [...]
Stardust@Home
Together, you and thousands of other Stardust@Home participants will find the first pristine interstellar dust particles ever brought to Earth. Nestled within the Stardust spacecraft’s capsule in 2006 were precious particles collected during its dramatic encounter with comet Wild 2 and something else, even rarer and no less precious: tiny particles of interstellar dust that originate in distant [...]
Astronaut Glove Challenge
The 2009 Astronaut Glove Challenge is designed to promote the development of glove joint technology, resulting in a highly dexterous and flexible glove that can be used by astronauts over long periods of time for space or planetary surface excursions. [...]
PlanetQuest Collaboratory
The PlanetQuest Collaboratory will turn your computer (Mac, PC, Linux, and others) into a virtual astronomical observatory that you can use to make and share real scientific discoveries. Our telescopes are focused on extremely dense star regions, such as the center of the galaxy in Sagittarius, and when an observing run ends and thousands of images have been collected, data [...]
Team FREDNET
Team FREDNET is an open source, open participation and officially registered competitor in the Google Lunar X PRIZE. Everybody regardless of background and past experience can join the effort and contribute with whatever they can contribute with. There is always room and need for one more. [...]
ISS EarthKAM
A NASA education program that provides unique, high quality photographs of our planet taken by middle school students. Using the web to direct a digital camera on space flights and the International Space Station, select middle schools request images based upon their classroom investigations. Teachers, school administrators, and other youth organization leaders are allowed to [...]
HiRISE Clickworkers
Help scientists search for landforms and identify new places to take pictures on Mars. The HiRISE camera, one of the instruments on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, has been sending back high-resolution images of Mars since late 2006. [...]
Mars Student Imaging Project
NASA and Arizona State University’s Mars Education Program is offering students in the U.S. the opportunity to be involved in authentic Mars research by participating in the Mars Student Imaging Project (MSIP). Teams of students in grades 5 through college sophomore level will have the opportunity to work with scientists, mission planners and educators on the THEMIS team at [...]
INSPIRE Project
A non-profit scientific, educational project whose objective is to bring the excitement of observing natural and man-made radio waves to high school students. Underlying this objective is the conviction that science and technology are the underpinnings of our modern society, and that only with an understanding of science and technology can people make correct decisions in their [...]
My NASA Data
Mentoring and inquirY using NASA Data for Atmospheric and earth science for Teachers and Amateurs (MY NASA DATA) is a project to enable K-12 teachers and students, as well as citizen scientists, to explore the large volumes of data that NASA collects about the Earth from space. A main goal of the MY NASA DATA project is to remove the barriers (such as file size and format, and [...]
Great World Wide Star Count
This project was designed to encourage students, families and interested citizens to record observations of the quality of their nighttime sky (including specific constellations – Cygnus in the Northern Hemisphere, Sagittarius in the Southern Hemisphere) and share that data with others via the GWWSC website. Interested individuals have the opportunity to get involved by [...]
Dawn Clickworkers
Contribute to the scientific understanding of the surfaces of solar system bodies. Surface features help astronomers learn more about solar system bodies. Developing the critical eye needed to identify and measure surface features in images takes a considerable amount of practice. Clickworkers offers you the opporunity to fine-tune your skills. [...]
Night Sky Network
A network of amateur astronomy clubs around the U.S. who hold events for the public (e.g. star parties, planetarium shows, classrooms, etc.). The Night Sky Network is a nationwide coalition that regularly shares their knowledge, time, and telescopes to bring amazing aspects of astronomy to you (it’s essentially a one-stop-shopping site to find a club or event in your town). [...]
SEDSAT-2
An educational satellite project involving student members from over 16 different nations and 5 continents. SEDSAT-2 stands for Students for the Exploration and Development of Space Satellite-2. The mission is to build a remote-sensing CubeSat using international collaboration. [...]
DASHlink
A virtual laboratory for scientists and engineers to disseminate results and collaborate on research problems in health management technologies for aeronautics systems.
DASHlink (Discovery in Aeronautics Systems Health) supports innovation by allowing researchers to [...]
Celestia
An open-source, photo-realistic, real-time, three-dimensional viewing of the solar system, the galaxy and the universe. Celestia is an easy to use, freely-distributed, multi-platform, open source, software package which has become a valuable tool for astronomy education. Used in homes, schools, museums and planetariums around the world, it also is used as a visualization tool by space [...]