NASA selects 19 proposals to expand volunteer science

Finding planets and measuring galaxy dust

NASA says the Rogue Worlds Project, led by Jacqueline Faherty at the American Museum of Natural History, plans to ask volunteers to search data from its SPHEREx space observatory. Participants would look for free-floating planets and brown dwarfs, planet-like celestial objects, in clusters of young stars.

Planet Hunters Roman, led by Bernard Gaudi at Ohio State University, plans to use Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope data. Volunteers would search for exoplanets—planets orbiting stars other than the Sun—through the way their gravity bends starlight.

Overlap Zoo’s selected proposal is led by Benne Holwerda at the University of Louisville. When two galaxies line up along our view, light from the more distant galaxy makes dust in the nearer one easier to measure. NASA’s September 22 project guide says volunteers check images previously flagged by Galaxy Zoo participants, classify galaxy features and draw their outlines. NASA says this work will help build the first large-scale catalogue of galaxy pairs suitable for dust studies.

Measuring and listening to space weather

Several proposals concern space weather: disturbances driven by the Sun that can affect Earth’s magnetic environment. Hyunju Connor at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center leads Space Weather UnderGround. The project proposes that volunteers install and monitor magnetometers—instruments that measure magnetic fields—in Alaska to track disturbances caused by the solar wind, the flow of charged particles from the Sun.

Lauren Blum at the University of Colorado Boulder leads a project that plans to turn plasma-wave measurements into sound. Plasma is electrically charged gas; volunteers would listen for waves in Earth’s magnetosphere, the region shaped by its magnetic field.

IMPACT, led by Muhammad Fraz Bashir at the University of California, Los Angeles, plans to ask volunteers to match satellite measurements of particles falling toward Earth with ground-based measurements of electromagnetic waves. NASA says those comparisons would help identify which waves drive different kinds of particle precipitation, supporting research into GPS navigation disruptions and radiation risks during space-weather events.

Classroom experiments, comet searches and telescope access

Growing Beyond Earth trains and equips middle- and high-school classrooms to test seeds and crops being considered as food for space travel. Its selected proposal aims to extend that distributed crop research.

Discovering the SPARC plans to bring amateur-radio equipment into community space-weather research and enroll high schools in a national research network. It builds on investigations conducted since 2017 into how radio signals bounce off the ionosphere, a high, electrically charged layer of Earth’s atmosphere.

Sungrazer 2.0 plans to bring new audiences into comet searches using images from NASA’s SOHO and STEREO solar-observing missions. The original Sungrazer Project began in 2006 after volunteers asked scientists to verify comet discoveries; NASA says its participants have since identified 5,204 comets.

Telescopes for All plans to expand public access to 22 professional robotic telescopes. NASA says participants would be able to make observations, analyse data and contribute to research, including searches for and studies of exoplanets.

Observations from lakes and polar regions

The other Science Activation selections extend participation beyond astronomy. RIPPLES plans to expand lake and reservoir level monitoring, with volunteer measurements used to check satellite observations. ARK plans to ask volunteers to examine high-resolution Antarctic satellite images for habitat changes affecting penguins, seals and whales, with scientists validating the work. Arctic LENS plans to invite Alaskans to monitor seasonal changes such as snow, ice, auroras and spring vegetation growth in support of NASA missions.

How to take part

NASA has not announced funding amounts, project durations or most recruitment dates. Detailed application routes, participant costs and eligibility rules for the proposed classroom and instrument-based activities also remain unannounced.

For Overlap Zoo, the requirements are already clear: an internet-connected computer, no prior knowledge and 10–15 minutes for the tutorial. After that, volunteers can contribute as much time as they choose. Start from NASA’s Overlap Zoo guide, follow its project-website link, choose “Classify” and complete the tutorial before reviewing images.