Pentru ca noi tintim cat mai sus, chiar si dincolo de cer, va aducem in atentie un concurs initiat de NASA: "vanatoarea" de asteroizi.
Mai jos sunt informatiile preluate direct de la sursa. Va uram mult succes si nu uitati: "Iasi Airport, your way to the sky" .....and beyond :)
Project Background
In this challenge, we are tasking competitors with developing a significantly improved algorithm to identify asteroids in images from ground-based telescopes. The winning solution will increase the detection sensitivity, minimize the number of false positives, ignore imperfections in the data, and run effectively on all computers
Asteroids pose both a possible threat and an opportunity for Earth: they could impact us, causing damage, OR possibly be mined for resources that could help extend our ability to explore the universe.
With the vast amount of data available now flowing from modern instruments, there is no good way for professional astronomers to verify every detection. In particular, looking in the future as large surveys grow ever larger, the ability to autonomously and rapidly check the images and determine which objects are suitable for follow up will be crucial. There is a long history to adapting programs to find these moving objects with some improvements along the way. For example, the Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) uses a crowded field galaxy photometry program (Source Extractor) that identifies centroids of targets that are distinctly separate from other objects. This output is fed into a custom program that sees which sources move. However, analysis implies that at best the CSS data pipeline is 80 – 90% accurate and there are (based on CSS discovery numbers) several thousand additional objects that could be recovered per year.
Partnership between NASA & Planetary Resources
NASA and Planetary Resources Inc., are partnering to develop crowd-sourced software solutions to enhance detection of Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) using NASA-funded data. The agreement is NASA’s first partnership associated with NASA’s Asteroid Grand Challenge.
Planetary Resources will facilitate the use of NASA-funded sky survey data and help support the algorithm competition and review results. NASA will develop and manage the contests and explore use of the best solutions for enhancing existing survey programs.
Through NASA’s asteroid initiative, NASA is enhancing its ongoing efforts to identify and characterize Near-Earth Object’s (NEOs) for scientific investigation, find asteroids potentially hazardous to Earth and find candidates viable for redirection to a stable orbit near the moon as a destination for exploration by astronauts.
The algorithm contests are 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 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 Harvard Business School in association with Harvard’s Institute of Quantitative Social Sciences, NTL uses the topcoder platform to enable a community of over 600,000 competitors to create the most innovative, efficient and optimized solutions for specific, real-world challenges faced by NASA.
High Level Requirements
This challenge will devise a solution that improves moving object routines, both in terms of absolute efficiency, but also decrease computation requirements to allow more modest machines to adequately perform moving object detection.The following requirements must be met:
- Properly ignore imperfections and artifacts in the data.
- Identify moving objects utilizing a time series of four images of the sky
- Recover the accurate astrometry of the moving object (RA, Dec, etc.)
Atomized Project Plan
So what’s coming up, and how do I register? Simply select any of the contest names below to find out more about each specific contest, and register to participate.| Contest | Start | End | Contest Type |
| Asteroid Data Hunter – Phase 1 – Create Marathon Match Problem Statement | 03/17/2014 | 04/02/2014 | Content Creation |
| Asteroid Data Hunter – Phase 1 – Invitational Dataset Testing | 04/04/2014 | 04/08/2014 | Bug Hunt |
| Asteroid Data Hunter – Phase 1 – Marathon Match | 04/11/2014 | 04/22/2014 | Marathon Match |
| Asteroid Data Hunter – Phase 1 – Algorithm Documentation | 04/24/2014 | 05/10/2014 | Content Creation |
| Asteroid Data Hunter – Phase 1 – Algorithm Productization | 05/12/2014 | 05/28/2014 | Assembly Competition |
| Asteroid Data Hunter – Phase 2 – Create Marathon Match Problem Statement | 05/30/2014 | 06/15/2014 | Content Creation |
| Asteroid Data Hunter – Phase 2 – Invitational Dataset Testing | 06/17/2014 | 06/21/2014 | Bug Hunt |
| Asteroid Data Hunter – Phase 2 – Marathon Match | 06/25/2014 | 07/08/2014 | Marathon Match |
| Asteroid Data Hunter – Phase 2 – Algorithm Documentation | 07/10/2014 | 07/26/2014 | Content Creation |
| Asteroid Data Hunter – Phase 2 – Algorithm Productization | 07/29/2014 | 08/14/2014 | Assembly Competition |
| Project Delivery | 08/22/2014 | 08/22/2014 |
*PLEASE NOTE: The contest start and end dates are estimates only, and may shift forward or backwards depending on contest progress. To verify a contest start date, please select the contest name to view the registration page.
Pagina de inregistrare este: http://www.topcoder.com/asteroids/
