New funding for Orbit@Home

[jasong]

I just noticed this. :)

February 26, 2007
We have finally some news. Good news. We're going to receive a very substantial donation sometime in the next four months, that will allow this project to reach the public beta phase, with support for clients for Linux/Mac OS X/Windows, new work units generated on a daily basis, and a graphical screen saver. Before then, we're going to update the orbit@home website, implementing a donation mechanism and exploring new ways to provide the funding for the project. Your ideas are welcome! One more thing: we're going to re-open for registration by new users. Welcome to the regenerated orbit@home!

[jasong]

They posted another message yesterday(July 23rd):

Orbit@Home Selected for Funding by NASA

We're pleased to announce that this project has been selected for funding by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Our proposal was submitted in response to the Applied Information Systems Research (AISR) element of the Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Science 2006 solicitation. Approximately 160 proposals were submitted in response to this solicitation, representing a potential over-subscription of the nominal budget by more than a factor of six.

This funding will provide partial support for this project for the next three years, allowing us to acquire the required computer hardware and to get started with the software development, focusing on two Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) research areas:
1) develop a search strategy for NEAs surveys that maximizes the volume covered in the space of the orbital elements of the NEAs;
2) demonstrate the applicability and advantages of using distributed computing to monitor the impact hazard posed by NEAs to the Earth.

We plan to start releasing clients for all the major platforms, and the relative work units, by the end of 2007.
I'm going to head in the forums to see if anything else can be found out. :)