Active Asteroids

Active Asteroids - asteroids with comet-like activity such as tails - are poorly understood in part because so few of these objects have been found. At the time of this project launch, fewer than 30 active asteroids have been found since 1949. Finding more active asteroids will enable scientists to study these enigmatic objects as a population. The implications for science and engineering are far-reaching, including:

1. Help answer key unsolved questions about how much water was delivered to Earth after it formed, and where that water originated.

2. Advise searches for life about where water – a prerequisite for life as we understand it – is found, both in our own solar system and other star systems too.

3. Inform spaceflight engineers seeking more practical, inexpensive, and environmentally responsible sources of fuel, air, and water.

4. Appraise volatile availability for prospective asteroid mining efforts and sample-return missions.

The long timespan and gigantic images taken over 5,000 square degrees of the sky in the Southern Hemisphere means there are many (over 10 million) asteroids to classify! With the generous help of Citizen Scientists we aim to increase the number of known Active Asteroids at least fourfold and encourage study of an ambiguous population of solar system objects, knowledge on which is currently hampered due to a very small sample size.