Desktop Application To Detect Asteroid By NASA Now Available To Public.

A software by NASA which was used to detect Asteroids in space, The application is is based on an Asteroid Data Hunter-derived algorithm that analyzes images for potential asteroids. It’s a tool that can be used by amateur astronomers and citizen scientists, This software was first announced at 2014 south by southwest Festival conducted in December.The series offered a total of $55,000 in awards for participants to develop significantly improved algorithms to identify asteroids in images captured by ground-based telescopes. The winning solutions of each piece of the contest combined to create an application using the best algorithm that increased the detection sensitivity, minimized the number of false positives, ignored imperfections in the data, and ran effectively on all computer systems.The algorithm contests were managed and executed by NASA's Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI). CoECI was established at the request of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to advance NASA’s open innovation efforts and extend that expertise to other federal agencies. CoECI uses the NASA Tournament Lab (NTL) for its advanced algorithmic and software development contests. Through its contract with the Crowd Innovation Lab at Harvard University, NTL uses Appirio’s Crowdsourcing platform powered by Topcoder to enable a community of more than 750,000 designers, developers and data scientists to create the most innovative, efficient and optimized solutions for specific, real-world challenges faced by NASA. Data storage of the Catalina Sky Survey data was provided by Amazon Web Services.

The new asteroid hunting application can be downloaded at:

http://topcoder.com/asteroids

For information about NASA’s Asteroid Grand Challenge, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/asteroidinitiative

Read full story on NASA by clicking here.

Ted Cruz Wants NASA To Focus On Deep Space Missions Instead Of Studying Earth

Ted Cruz, chairman of the Senate’s Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, said NASA should focus more on deep space exploration and less on studying the planet through Earth observing satellites. At a senate hearing over the $18.5 billion budget request for NASA’s fiscal year 2016 on Thursday, Cruz expressed concerns that the space agency had lost sight of its “core mission,” according to media reports.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) addresses the International Association of Firefighters delegates at IAFF Presidential Forum in Washington, March 10, 2015. Reuters/Joshua Roberts

“Almost any American would agree that the core function of NASA is to explore space. That's what inspires little boys and little girls across this country,” Cruz reportedly said at the hearing that was also attended by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “I am concerned that NASA in the current environment has lost its full focus on that core mission.”

Cruz pointed out that NASA’s budget on Earth Sciences projects had increased in recent years while its expenditure on space missions had decreased, which, he reportedly said, “does not represent a fair or appropriate allocation of resources.”

However, Bolden disagreed with the senator’s assessment, arguing that NASA’s core mission, from the very beginning, had been to “to investigate, explore space and the Earth environment, and to help us make this place a better place.”

“We can't go anywhere if the Kennedy Space Center goes underwater and we don't know it -- and that's understanding our environment,” Bolden reportedly said, referring to the sea level rise triggered by climate change. “It is absolutely critical that we understand Earth's environment because this is the only place that we have to live.”

In a letter written to Cruz on Friday, the American Geophysical Union -- a nonprofit with over 62,000 scientists from over 140 countries as its members -- backed Bolden, calling Earth sciences a “fundamental part of science.”

“Earth Science Division missions aid in flood prediction, earthquake response, and severe storm tracking across the Great Plains. Greater knowledge and prediction skill are urgent when we consider the effort, time and costs of protecting infrastructure along coasts, rebuilding fish populations, developing new water resources for manufacturing and agriculture, and restoring communities in the wake of hazards,” the Union said in the letter. “These observations, and many others like them, are integral and require the vantage point of outer space.”

Cruz’s latest comments are in line with his previous statements where he reportedly accused President Barack Obama's administration of diverting NASA from its “core priorities.”

“We need to get back to the central mission of NASA,” Cruz had reportedly said earlier, after becoming the new chairman of the subcommittee in January. Cruz has also been an outspoken climate change skeptic and has, in the past, said that there has been “no recorded warming” over the last 15 years. NASA, on the other hand, states, as part of its mission, that its role is to find answers to “critical challenges facing our planet -- climate change, sea level rise, freshwater resources and extreme weather events.”

Source:
IBTimes

Astronauts return to Earth after six months on International Space Station

Soyuz TMA-04M Joe Acaba signs the Soyuz capsule.

A Soyuz capsule carrying two Russians and one American landed in Kazakhstan on Thursday, ending the astronauts' nearly six months aboard the International Space Station.

The capsule carried Russians Alexander Samokutayev and Elena Serova and NASA's Barry Wilmore, who blasted off for the space station on Sept. 26.

The capsule landed upright in heavy fog southeast of the town of Dzhezkazgan on the Kazakh steppes. Despite the poor visibility, recovery workers arrived within several minutes and all three astronauts were extracted within a half-hour.

They were taken to recliner-style chairs set up near the capsule, to begin their readjustment to gravity and undergo brief medical tests. All three appeared in good condition, and Serova smiled broadly as she sat in the chair bundled up against temperatures a few degrees below freezing.

Three other astronauts remain aboard the space station. They will be joined by three others on March 27; two of those -- Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko -- are to spend a full year on the ISS.