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This research project was made possible through a grant from NASA.
Asteroid Hunting
Research Objectives
This is a three-year grant from NASA to detect asteroids in archival images. These images were taken by the Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) survey. NEAT was a pioneering scientific effort that operated from 1995 to 2007. The survey discovered more than 40,000 minor planets and hundreds of comets.
Nugent, Bauer, and a team of students will re-analyze the archived NEAT images. With the aid of modern software techniques, such as machine learning, they will identify near-Earth asteroids and comets in the data.
Impact
Nugent and Bauer estimate that this work will double the number of asteroids detected in the NEAT data.
Learn more
TED Talk: Adventures of an Asteroid Hunter
The Guardian: Confessions of an Asteroid Hunter
TED Book: Asteroid Hunters