WHAT WE DO


JOINRENEWJOIN

Give a gift membership.
  

Projects: Shoemaker NEO Grants

2004 Shoemaker NEO Grant Call for Proposals

Since its founding, The Planetary Society has actively supported a number of efforts to discover and characterize the population of near-Earth objects (NEOs) that both threaten our planet and hold great promise for future exploration. In 1997, the Society began the Gene Shoemaker NEO grant program to help in the global effort to meet the Spaceguard goal of discovering 90% of the 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) and larger NEOs that can impact our planet. The program honors pioneering planetary geologist Gene Shoemaker, who did so much to help us understand the process of impact cratering on the planets and the nature of the NEO population, and seeks to assist amateur observers, observers in developing countries, and under-funded professional observers in contributing to vital NEO research.

To date, the Society has awarded 17 Shoemaker NEO grants totaling over $120,000 to observers around the world. Grant recipients have played critical roles in recovering small asteroids newly discovered by the major asteroid survey programs by providing the crucial follow-up observations to determine precise orbits for these objects. For example, 2002 grant awardee Roy Tucker made 50,799 asteroid position observations in 2003 alone, making his observatory the world’s 8th most productive asteroid astrometry station. Along the way, he discovered a new Aten-class NEO (an object that spends most of its time orbiting the Sun interior to Earth’s orbit). 2002 awardee James McGaha made important observations in 2003 and 2004 that showed 5 newly-discovered NEOs to be comets, and John Broughton’s April 11, 2004 discovery of 2004 GA1 is possibly the first amateur discovery of a large, potentially hazardous NEO.

Through these observations and others, supported by Society members and their donations, the Society is playing an active role in helping to ‘retire’ some of the risk of impact from NEOs and to reveal the properties of these interesting and valuable targets for future exploration.

We have now begun the selection process for the next round of Shoemaker NEO grants. When originally conceived, the program focused on helping to provide larger telescopes and more sensitive CCD cameras to observers to help broaden the survey coverage of the sky to increase the rate of NEO discovery. As we look at the observing programs that are now contributing the most, we can rejoice that we have made the awards wisely, and the field as a whole has been benefiting as a result.

Over time, however, the half dozen or so large professional NEO survey programs, particularly the LINEAR (Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research) program run by MIT’s Lincoln Laboratories, have made great leaps forward in automated searches of wide swaths of the sky for very faint asteroids. Although amateur observers still contribute many valuable NEO observations, their most significant contributions have evolved away from NEO discovery toward astrometric follow-up (observations to help refine the orbits of new NEOs discovered by the professional surveys) and valuable physical studies to help better characterize the physical nature of these planetary projectiles. This next round of Shoemaker grants will focus on advancing amateur contributions in these latter areas (astrometric follow up and physical studies).

The need now is for larger telescopes (apertures larger than about 24 inches, or 60 cm), or effectively larger telescopes at superior observing sites, and for automation of observing facilities and equipment. Large telescopes at sites with dark, clear skies allow for observation of NEOs fainter than magnitude V = 20 (where the professional surveys are discovering many new small objects) and automation of observing facilities allows observers with ‘day jobs’ to utilize their facilities more nearly full time and much more efficiently. Priority will be given to applicants seeking to improve facilities with large telescopes and/or for automation. Priority will also be given to programs that can leverage Shoemaker grant funds through matching contributions from other sources.

Applications for the current round of Shoemaker NEO grants are due October 1, 2004. Grant sizes are typically $3,000 to $10,000. The Planetary Society welcomes applications from amateur and under-funded professional observers anywhere in the world. All applications will be reviewed by an international panel of NEO experts.