NASA Citizen Science: Putting Real Data, Observations, and Analysis Methods in the Hands of the Public

Abstract:

The ability for the general public, science attentive public, educators, and amateur scientists to obtain and use data from remote instrumentation in authentic research / citizen science activities has grown enormously in the past decade due to the internet, increasing bandwidths, easy translation of data formats, and an expanding population of web based acquisition, display, analysis, and publishing tools. The impact of this new and rapidly growing capability is both evolutionary and paradigm changing. At no other time in history have we had the ability to marshal planetary scale resources to educate large populations across socio economic and geographical boundaries and to push the envelope of science discovery through long baseline observing campaigns, crowd sourcing, and the like. This talk will focus on some of NASA’s authentic research and citizen science campaigns and discuss opportunities for future public collaborations.