NASA is offering a $35,000 grand prize to citizen scientists who create improved algorithms that can be used to identify asteroids in images captured by ground-based telescopes, according to a NASA press release.

The contest, which has been called Asteroid Data Hunter, will run over the next six months and is being conducted in partnership with Planetary Resources Inc. of Bellevue, Washington.

"For the past three years, NASA has been learning and advancing the ability to leverage distributed algorithm and coding skills through the NASA Tournament Lab to solve tough problems," said Jason Crusan, NASA Tournament Lab director, according to NASA. "We are now applying our experience with algorithm contests to helping protect the planet from asteroid threats through image analysis."

Before the contest begins, contestants can create an account on the contest series website and learn more about the rules and different phases of the contest.

The winning solution must increase the detection sensitivity, ignore imperfections in the data, run effectively on all computer systems, and minimize the number of false positives, according to NASA.

"Protecting the planet from the threat of asteroid impact means first knowing where they are," said Jenn Gustetic, Prizes and Challenges Program, according to NASA. "By opening up the search for asteroids, we are harnessing the potential of innovators and makers and citizen scientists everywhere to help solve this global challenge."

Gusteti and Jason Kessler, Grand Challenges Program executive, will co-host a panel at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas on March 10 called "Are We Smarter than the Dinosaurs?"

The two will discuss a number of things, like the outline of the Asteroid Data Hunter contest and other efforts to detect and mitigate asteroid threats.

"Current asteroid detection initiatives are only tracking one percent of the estimated objects that orbit the Sun. We are excited to partner with NASA in this contest to help increase the quantity and knowledge about asteroids that are potential threats, human destinations, or resource rich." said Chris Lewicki, President and Chief Engineer of the asteroid mining company Planetary Resources, Inc., according to NASA. "Applying distributed algorithm and coding skills to the extensive NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey data set will yield important insights into the state of the art in detecting asteroids."

The contests are managed and executed by NASA's Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI). CoECI was created at the request of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

The Asteroid Data Hunter contest begins March 17 and runs through August.

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