NASA is calling on coders to help in the hunt for potentially dangerous asteroids. Over the next six months, the agency will be offering a total of $35,000 in prizes in a contest series that aims to improve the way telescopes detect, track, and analyze incoming space rocks.

NASA's Near Earth Object Observation Program already harnesses telescopes around the world to be on the lookout for asteroids the fly past our planet. But the vast volumes of data created can't be inspected by hand. Computers are helpful, but their algorithms are estimated to be only about 80 to 90 percent reliable and could be missing thousands of objects every year. According to NASA, winning solutions in their contests will "increase the detection sensitivity, minimize the number of false positives, ignore imperfections in the data, and run effectively on all computers."

The Asteroid Data Hunter contest series, which begins on Mar. 17 and runs through August, is being run with asteroid mining company Planetary Resources. Both it and NASA have a vested interest in finding asteroids — NASA wants to send a human crew to visit one in the next decade and Planetary Resources hopes to exploit their metals and water for profit. Those interested in coding algorithms to help can sign up at the NASA Tournament Lab.

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