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View Full Version : Orbit@Home status update



willebenn
06-05-2006, 06:23 AM
From Pasquale at Orbit HQ on 30May06

Dear orbit@home users:

The project is very well alive, but in a state of apparent inactivity, at least on the BOINC side. While we didn't work directly on the BOINC application or the science database, in the last months we've been working on ORSA, adding several important features that will be used in the BOINC application. On the funding side, we're "fighting" in order to demonstrate to NASA how important it is to use numerical simulations to support Near-Earth Objects discovery, characterization, and threat mitigation, and we should hear something back about this pretty soon (1-2 weeks from now). We're thinking about extending o@h's science in several directions, such as providing a guide to astronomers to where to point their telescopes every night in order to maximize the probability to detect a new NEO, or how to automatically determine rotation period, spin pole and shape of a NEO, or how to test numerically different deflection methods in order to mitigate the threat posed by NEOs. If these ideas turn out to be scientifically valid, then we should ear great news soon. Otherwise... we'll keep scratching our heads in order to find a way to make o@h start crunching!