Orbit@Home
Mission
The mission of orbit@home is to apply distributed computing to the study of Solar System dynamics. Distributed computing provides an unmatched amount of computational power, enabling qualitatively new research levels in terms of detail and accuracy.
Many are the open problems that we plan to study with orbit@home. At first, we will focus on Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) research, focusing into the areas below:
- NEA search strategies: we are studying a search strategy that maximizes the volume covered in the space of the orbital elements of the NEAs; its implementation requires the availability of a very significant amount of computing power, making the distributed computing approach the perfect candidate; [abstract]
- NEA impact hazard monitoring: we are studying the applicability and advantages of using a distributed computing system to monitor the impact hazard by NEAs; when compared to standard systems, the distributed computing approach provides better scalability, responsiveness, and accuracy. [abstract]
Public outreach and education represents also a very important aspect of the system, because the public provides the main distributed computing power and participates in the science being studied.
The orbit@home project is designed, developed and operated by Pasquale Tricarico, Associate Research Scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, AZ.
Major funding for orbit@home is provided by the NASA Applied Information Systems Research Program, grant NNX08AD18G.