(NASA/MSFC)

The 17th Annual Great Moonbuggy Race will be held April 13-14, 2012 in Huntsville, Alabama, at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. Participating students will design a vehicle that addresses a series of engineering problems that are similar to problems faced by the original Moonbuggy team.

Each Moonbuggy will be human powered and carry two students, one female and one male, over a half-mile simulated lunar terrain course including “craters”, rocks, “lava” ridges, inclines and “lunar” soil.

Moonbuggy entries are expected to be of “proof-of-concept” and engineering test model nature, rather than final production models. Each student team of six members is responsible for building their own buggy, and the course drivers, who are chosen from each team, must also be builders of the vehicle.

Project owners + coordinators:
Sabrina Pearson

To learn more, visit: http://moonbuggy.msfc.nasa.gov/index.html

To participate, register by February 10, 2012 (January 10, 2012 if outside the U.S.) at: http://moonbuggy.msfc.nasa.gov/register.cfm

To stay up-to-date on this project:
• follow twitter.com/moonbuggyrace

A volunteer project to bring to life early manned space flight in a searchable, linkable format. In fifty years since mankind began to explore in person the universe outside our home planet, there have been many memorable moments, of beauty, of bravery, and occasionally of tragedy. For those who did not live through them it is sometimes difficult to appreciate the excitement of these early flights. Spacelog aims to bring those missions back to life: a website for exploring manned space missions through transcripts of conversations from during the flights between those in space and those back on the ground, and from photography taken at the time.

To date there have been over two hundred human spaceflight missions. Only a small number of these are currently available on Spacelog, although we’d be delighted for assistance in getting more up and alive. For NASA missions, the transcripts Spacelog works from were prepared in the 60s and 70s; from there, they’ve been scanned, converted to text, and then cleaned up by Spacelog volunteers. There are a whole bundle of different tasks that people can help out on, from the very small (such as noticing and pointing out a problem with a transcription of a particular mission) up to the fairly large (transcribing an entire mission). Along the way there are jobs involving writing new material (biographies, descriptions of key moments and phases, and so on), selecting images for use in missions (and possibly cropping or preparing them in Photoshop), and if you’re a programmer you can get hold of the source code behind the site, and help develop Spacelog further.

In general, the first step in getting involved is simply to tell Spacelog you’re around and interested. Drop an email to the spacelog@googlegroups.com mailing list, and ask any questions you need to get started. If you use IRC, the team tends to hang out on #spacelog, which can be more useful if you need to ask a number of related questions.

Project owners + coordinators:
The Spacelog Team

To learn more and participate, visit: http://spacelog.org

To stay up-to-date on this project:
• follow twitter.com/spacelog
• join groups.google.com/group/spacelog
• chat on irc://irc.freenode.net/#spacelog

A community that provides distributed computing power to aerospace research projects that might not otherwise have access to supercomputers due to financial, administrative or bureaucratic reasons. By volunteering a percentage of your computer’s unused operating power, your computer will focus on a variety of tasks from modeling the Moon’s surface to simulating various spacecraft, thus expediting fundamental and applicable research.

The combined power of all volunteering users will help to solve important scientific tasks for both students and professionals in fields from astronomy to aerospace engineering. The bottom line is to benefit from the generosity of the volunteers and to benefit from the accumulation of different projects, like sharing programming knowledge in distributed computing and influencing the others’ simulation by its own solutions.

The Constellation platform uses BOINC (Berkeley Open Interface for Network Computing) and is an open space for anyone who is an air and space enthusiast that wants to donate idle computing time or even skill for a sub-project on platform. Get in touch with the Constellation project coordinators if you need computing power for your own simulation.

Project owners + coordinators:
The Constellation Team

To learn more, visit: http://aerospaceresearch.net/constellation

To participate:
• download and run BOINC, then select Attach to Project and when prompted, enter http://aerospaceresearch.net/constellation/

To stay up-to-date on this project:
• follow twitter.com/ardnnews
• join aerospaceresearch.net/constellation/forum_index.php
• connect with facebook.com/pages/AerospaceResearchnet

Help discover new exoplanets (aka extrasolar planets/planets orbiting other stars) by exploring space telescope data from NASA’s Kepler mission. Planet Hunters is an online experiment that taps into the power of human pattern recognition.

The data consists of brightness measurements, or “light curves”, taken every thirty minutes for more than 150,000 stars in the Cygnus constellation. The Kepler team has been developing computer algorithms to analyze light curve data because it is not possible for them to visually inspect every light curve. In a sense, the Planet Hunters team is pitting human versus machine, betting that there will be planets which can only be found via the remarkable human ability for pattern recognition.

You will be looking at changes in star brightness at a level that has never before been seen. As a participant, you’ll search for possible transit events – a brief dip in brightness that occurs when a planet passes in front of the star – with the goal of discovering an exoplanet (hence the name “Planet Hunters”).

Participants are considered partners with the Planet Hunters science team, who will obtain follow up observations at the telescope based on analyzing participants’ assessments. What happens if you are the first person to discover a new exoplanet? If the Planet Hunters science team is able to confirm it’s real (by checking the Kepler team’s existing exoplanet list and obtaining spectroscopic data using the Keck telescope in Hawaii), you’ll be invited to be a co-author on a discovery paper submitted for publication.

Project owners + coordinators:
The Planet Hunters team, team@planethunters.org

To learn more and participate, visit: http://planethunters.org

To stay up-to-date on this project:
• follow @planethunters
• read blogs.zooniverse.org/planethunters
• connect with facebook.com/pages/PlanetHunters/168325563205996

To understand different types of galaxies and how galaxies form, Galaxy Zoo: Hubble needs your help classifying images of hundreds of thousands of galaxies taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. If you’re quick, you may even be the first person in history to see each of the galaxies you’re asked to classify.

Your job is very simple! All you need to do is look out for the features that mark out spiral and elliptical galaxies. There’s a tutorial showing how to classify galaxies according to shape (elliptical, spiral or irregular) and rotation (clockwise or anti-clockwise).

Those involved are directly contributing to scientific research, while getting an opportunity to view the beautiful and varied galaxies that inhabit our universe. Why does Galaxy Zoo need people to do this, rather than just using a computer? The simple answer is that the human brain is much better at recognizing patterns than a computer. Galaxies are complicated objects that vary in appearance enormously, and yet in some ways they can be very similar.

More than 250,000 people have taken part in Galaxy Zoo so far, producing a wealth of valuable data and sending telescopes on Earth and in space chasing after their discoveries. This latest incarnation of Galaxy Zoo uses data from the Hubble Space Telescope to go deeper than ever before. Read ‘The Story So Far’ to find out what has been achieved to date with Galaxy Zoo 1 and Galaxy Zoo 2.

Project owners + coordinators:
Galaxy Zoo Team, team@galaxyzoo.org

To learn more and participate, visit: http://galaxyzoo.org

To stay up-to-date on this project:
• follow @galaxyzoo
• read galaxyzooblog.org
• join galaxyzooforum.org
• connect with facebook.com/galaxy-zoo-hubble-edition

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 terrain in visually rich 3D, just as if you were really there.

World Wind provides geospatial visualization technology via extensible and modular components that can be incorporated into any application. World Wind spurs innovation by involving the world community in advancing this cross-platform Java-based technology.

Project owners + coordinators:
Patrick Hogan, project manager
Randy Kim
Chris Maxwell
Tom Gaskins
Bruce Lam

To learn more and participate, visit:
http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov

To stay up-to-date on this project:
• join forum.worldwindcentral.com
• explore worldwindcentral.com/wiki

Epsilon Aurigae artwork by Brian Thieme

Epsilon Aurigae is a supergiant star located 2,000 light years from Earth that mysteriously gets eclipsed every 27.1 years by an equally large unknown dark object. The event has baffled scientists since 1821, but through the Citizen Sky project, you’ll make observations and analyses that could decipher this scientific puzzle!

The next eclipse of Epsilon Aurigae began in August 2009 and will continue into 2011. The Citizen Sky project provides you with a finder chart and tutorials so you can collect and contribute scientific data to help solve the mystery. Epsilon Aurigae is a variable star—this means it changes in brightness over time. Collecting data on these changes can help us understand the star. No equipment or prior experience is required; the star is so bright in fall, winter and spring that it can be observed by anyone with a good pair of eyes, even in the most light-polluted cities.

Project owners + coordinators:
Citizen Sky team, (email form)

To learn more and participate, visit: http://citizensky.org

To stay up-to-date on this project:
• subscribe to citizensky.org/category/newsletter/citizen-sky-newsletter
• read citizensky.org/blog
• join citizensky.org/forum

Build and launch your own satellite into space! One of the primary missions at Interorbital is to provide satellite hardware and launch support for the experimental and commercial satellite community. Planet Earth has entered the age of the Personal Satellite with the introduction of Interorbital’s TubeSat Personal Satellite (PS) Kit. The new IOS TubeSat PS Kit is the low-cost alternative to the CubeSat. And, best of all, the price of the TubeSat kit actually includes the price of a launch into Low-Earth-Orbit on an IOS NEPTUNE 30 launch vehicle. Since the TubeSats are placed into self-decaying orbits 310 kilometers (192 miles) above the Earth’s surface, they do not contribute to the long-term build-up of orbital debris. After operating for a few months (the exact length of time on orbit is dependent on solar activity), they will safely re-enter the atmosphere and burn-up. TubeSats are designed to be orbit-friendly. Launches are expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Total Price of the TubeSat Kit including a Launch to Orbit is $8,000 USD.

Each TubeSat kit includes the satellite’s structural components, safety hardware, solar panels, batteries, power management hardware and software, transceiver, antennas, microcomputer, and the required programming tools. With these components alone, the builder can construct a satellite that puts out enough power to be picked up on the ground by a hand-held amateur radio receiver. Simple applications include broadcasting a repeating message from orbit or programming the satellite to function as a private orbital amateur radio relay station. These are just two examples. The TubeSat also allows the builder to add his or her own experiment or function to the basic TubeSat Kit. Examples of add-on experiments or applications include the following:

Earth-from-space video imaging, Earth magnetic field measurement, satellite orientation detection (horizon sensor, gyros, accelerometers, etc.), orbital environment measurements (temperature, pressure, radiation, etc.), on-orbit hardware and software component testing (microprocessors, etc.), tracking migratory animals from orbit, testing satellite stabilization methods, biological experiments, on-orbit advertising, private e-mail, space art, space burials.

If specified, Interorbital can supply an empty external shell with component rack at a lower cost. This allows advanced TubeSat developers to replace the standard kit components with their own hardware.

Project owners + coordinators:
Randa Milliron

To learn more and order a kit, visit: http://interorbital.com/TubeSat_1.htm

image via Lunar and Planetary Institute and G. Bacon (STScI)

A citizen science project around classifying high resolution images of craters and various parts of the lunar surface taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) via the Planetary Data System (PDS). From billion-year-old volcanic eruptions and curving lava channels to recent asteroid impacts, the images you classify will help advance lunar science – providing new insights into the geological history of the Moon. Your help is also needed in identifying which parts of the Moon are covered with boulders so as to create lunar landing hazard maps for future spacecraft and human exploration missions. Of course, in exploring the lunar surface, who knows what else you might find – the hope is that Moon Zoo will lead to the discovery of many unusual features.

Craters on the lunar surface stay almost until eternity due to the lack of weather-based erosion, thus the number of craters on a surface area tells how old it is.  This technique is used all over the Solar System, but the Moon is particularly important because of a ground truth — samples brought back by the Apollo missions — which allow for calibrating any estimates. You can see examples of these types of things on the tutorial page.

Project owners + coordinators:
Moon Zoo team, team@moonzoo.org

To learn more and participate, visit: http://moonzoo.org

To stay up-to-date on this project:
• follow @moonzoo
• read blogs.zooniverse.org/moonzoo
• join forum.moonzoo.org

photo via Richard Bell

MilkyWay@home is a distributed computing project, harnessing the power of volunteered computers to create a highly accurate 3D model of the Milky Way galaxy. The project uses data gathered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) platform. By volunteering a percentage of your computer’s unused operating power, your computer will focus on mapping out a small section of our galaxy. MilkyWay@Home’s data, source code, research and results are open source and available for public use.
In general, an astrophysics problem revolves around creating a computer system model that will replicate what we see in the sky – if a model matches exactly then we can leapfrog off that information to work on a bigger, more involved problem. MilkyWay@Home is currently focusing on the Sagittarius stream, which provides knowledge about how our galaxy was formed and how tidal tails are created when galaxies merge. The general idea is that our galaxy actually has smaller galaxies mixed within it, probably from galactic collisions in ancient history. Mapping the dynamics of such interstellar streams is expected to provide crucial clues for understanding the evolution of the Milky Way and similar galaxies. It could also provide insight on dark matter.

This project also enables research in both astroinformatics and computer science. Astroinformatics is a rising field at the interface between Computer Science and Astronomy with new discoveries made possible by the abundance in galactic data created by the SDSS. As of January 2010, MilkyWay@Home has 44,900 users and 1,590 teams in 170 countries, with an average computing power of 1,382 TeraFlops. This ranks MilkyWay@Home second amongst the Top 500 list of supercomputers.

Project owners + coordinators:
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s departments of Computer Science and Physics/Astronomy
Travis Desell, Graduate Research Assistant in Computer Science
Dave Przybylo, Undergraduate Research Assistant in Computer Science
Nathan Cole, Graduate Research Assistant in Physics, Applied Physics and Astronomy
Malik Magdon-Ismail, Associate Professor of Computer Science
Heidi Newberg, Associate Professor of Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy
Boleslaw Szymanski, Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor of Computer Science
Carlos Varela, Associate Professor of Computer Science

To learn more, visit: http://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu

To participate:
• download and run BOINC, then select Attach to Project and when prompted, enter http://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/
• to optimize your computer for contributing to MilkyWay@Home, you will need to have BOINC running in the background while leaving your computer on for at least 24 hours

To stay up-to-date on this project:
• join milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/forum_index.php