The International Astronomical Union (IAU), an organization that assigns official names and designations to quadratic bodies, has recently confirmed that 18 new asteroids have been discovered by Indian students as part of a global science program.
The International Asteroid Discovery Project was carried out by STEM and Space, an organization working towards the study of astronomy and space science in India, together with the International Astronomical Research Collaboration. national (IASC) as part of a NASA citizen science project.
Over the past two years, 150 students from across India took part in this two-month asteroid discovery campaign, making it the largest asteroid discovery project in India, Mila Mitra, Co-Founder and Academic President of STEM and Space, told PTI.
In the project, students from India and around the world analyzed the high-quality astronomical data provided by IASC – an online science program for children to discover Asteroids and Near Earth Objects (NEO).
NEOs are rocky objects in orbit between Mars and Jupiter, which are a challenge to Earth because they could go out of orbit and threaten impact.
According to Mitra and her team, NASA has started programs like IASC to monitor such asteroids on a regular basis, also open to citizen scientists and students to allow more asteroids to be detected and discovered.
She explained that the students in the project will use advanced software analysis, “spending nearly two or three hours per day” to look for asteroids and report on what they found out.
Of the 372 pre-asteroids identified by the students, 18 were last declared “temporary” or confirmed asteroids, Mitra noted.
“IAU confirmed these decisions last month,” said the co-founder of STEM and Space.
Mitra believes that such programs will take the experiential learning of science, technology, engineering and medicine, or STEM, through the realm of space with a gamut of active learning workshops.
However, she said more efforts are needed to extend the reach of these programs to government-run schools and those in rural parts of the country to make the citizen science projects more equitable.
Mitra noted that all recipients received Temporary Discovery Certificates from IASC and NASA for their scientific contribution in the discovery of asteroids.