Credit: Planetary Resources

Credit: Planetary Resources

NASA and Planetary Resources Inc., of Bellevue, Wash., are partnering to develop crowd-sourced software solutions to enhance detection of near-Earth objects using agency-funded data.

The agreement is NASA’s first partnership associated with the agency’s Asteroid Grand Challenge.

“Asteroids hold the resources necessary to enable a sustainable, even indefinite presence in space — for science, commerce and continued prosperity here on Earth,” said Chris Lewicki, president, chief engineer, and also chief asteroid miner of Planetary Resources.

“By harnessing the public’s interest in space and asteroid detection, we can more quickly identify the potential threats, as well as the opportunities,” Lewicki said.

More information on NASA’s asteroid initiative can be found at:

http://www.nasa.gov/asteroidinitiative

“As we’re telling the story of why asteroid mining will fuel human expansion into the Cosmos, we can often get long winded, so we decided to boil it all down into a brief educational video short,” Lewicki said in a Planetary Resources press statement.

To view this video, go to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLouRKHknOU&feature=youtu.be

By Leonard David