Planetary Defense, Future Of Space Travel Could Hinge On Kickstarter

Planetary Resources, the group of world leaders charged with building the ground floor opportunities for a space travel industry, needs our help. One of those opportunities involves mining asteroids, believed to hold riches beyond belief. Developing technology that will enable travel to those pots of gold is already a daunting task, but the real concern is finding those asteroids in the first place. Luckily, Planetary Resources has a plan.

This week, Planetary Resources announced plans to empower citizen scientists to aid in the search for potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) and support planetary defense. Funded by the ARKYD Kickstarter (if it reaches $1.7 million by Sunday, and you can help make that happen), Planetary Resources will partner with Zooniverse to create Asteroid Zoo, a program to find potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) at home.Asteroid Zoo will allow students, citizen scientists and space enthusiasts to search through terabytes of data collected by Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) for undiscovered asteroids in a fun, game-like process from their personal computers, and help train computers to better find them in the future.

Sound interesting? Want to have a hand in forging the future of space travel for all? Check out this video from Planetary Resources with Chief Asteroid Miner Chris Lewicki: