Orbit@Home goes to Production mode

[NeoGen]

This is part of the email I received from Orbit@Home. Great news! :)


Greetings from Orbit@Home.
Project News
We are pleased to announce that Orbit@Home is now in production mode. During the past month we have generated work-units at a rate of 300,000 per week, each one requiring about one hour of computing time on an average desktop computer. Read more about this here (http://orbit.psi.edu/?q=node/27).
The process of preparing the astronomical data for the analysis with the Orbit@Home client, and then recombine all the results to generate an optimized search strategy for near-Earth asteroids, has been recently described in detail on the Orbit@Home website. To read more about the science behind Orbit@Home, visit here (http://orbit.psi.edu/?q=node/28).
What's Next?
We are now analyzing the results obtained so far, and testing the latest improvements to the scientific application before deploying it and create a new series of work batches. New work-units should be generated by the end of October 2010.

If anyone wanna take a look at the project, here is the website:
http://orbit.psi.edu/

[Dirk Broer]

Latest Orbit@Home news:
A Missed Opportunity
Submitted by tricaric on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 01:23.
Today we have received news about our proposal to NASA to fund this project. Our proposal was not selected for funding. It was evaluated as highly experimental and not likely to yield substantial improvements in asteroid discovery rate over existing search strategies.
We remain dedicated to this project, and will continue to search for viable ways to support it, but it will take approximately one more year to hear back from the next round of proposals.
We thank all the users who have been long waiting for some good news to see this project resume its activities. We missed this opportunity, but there will be others soon.

[AMDave]

Aww man.
I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that USAF launched the "Space Fence" (http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/business-brains/new-space-fence-will-help-keep-better-track-of-space-junk/13451)
Although Orbit@Home intends to target NEAs, it is probable that the 'Fence' will have similar capability.

[NeoGen]

Aww man... that's a shame... I bet Orbit@Home would cost only a small fraction of what USAF is spending on equipment, man hours and electricity.

On a separate note... seeing that little image on the Space Fence article brought to mind that having a good amount of space trash works as a first line of defense against any invading aliens. :icon_lol:

[Dirk Broer]

Don't approach! Our rubbish will kill you!
In case of emergency: wave your towel (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)