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By NASA
8 Min Read How to Contribute to Citizen Science with NASA
A number of NASA projects use mobile phone apps to put satellite data into the palm of your hand, and allow intrepid citizen scientists to upload data. Credits:
NASA A cell phone, a computer—and your curiosity—is all you need to become a NASA citizen scientist and contribute to projects about Earth, the solar system, and beyond.
Science is built from small grains of sand, and you can contribute yours from any corner of the world.
All you need is a cell phone or a computer with an internet connection to begin a scientific adventure. Can you imagine making a pioneering discovery in the cosmos? Want to help solve problems that could improve life on our planet? Or maybe you dream of helping solve an ancient mystery of the universe? All of this is possible through NASA’s Citizen Science program.
NASA defines citizen science, or participatory science, as “science projects that rely on volunteers,” said Dr. Marc Kuchner, an astrophysicist and the Citizen Science Officer in the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.
For decades, volunteers have been supporting NASA researchers in different fields and in a variety of ways, depending on the project. They help by taking measurements, sorting data from NASA missions, and deepening our understanding of the universe and our home planet. It all counts.
“That’s science for you: It’s collaborative,” said Kuchner, who oversees the more than 30 citizen science projects NASA offers. “I connect the public and scientists to get more NASA science done.”
NASA astrophysicist Marc Kuchner is a pioneer in participatory science and today serves as NASA’s Citizen Science program officer. In 2014, Kuchner created the Disk Detective project, which helps NASA scientists study how planets form. Kuchner has also been the principal investigator for some of the agency’s many citizen science projects, but today he oversees the portfolio and promotes volunteer participation around the world.
Credit: David Friedlander A menu of projects for all tastes
Citizen scientists can come from anywhere in the world—they do not have to be U.S. citizens or residents. Volunteers help NASA look for planets in other solar systems, called exoplanets; sort clouds in Earth’s sky; observe solar eclipses; or detect comets and asteroids. Some of those space rocks are even named after the volunteers who helped find them.
Mass participation is key in initiatives that require as many human eyes as possible. “There are science projects that you can’t do without the help of a big team,” Kuchner said. For example, projects that need large datasets from space telescopes—or “things that are physically big and you need people in different places looking from different angles,” he said.
One example is Aurorasaurus, which invites people to observe and classify northern and southern auroras. “We try to study them with satellites, but it really helps to have people on the ground taking photos from different places at different times,” he explained.
“Part of the way we serve our country and humankind is by sharing not just the pretty pictures from our satellites, but the entire experience of doing science,” Kuchner said.
More than 3 million people have participated in the program. Kuchner believes that shows how much people want to be part of what he calls the “roller coaster” of science. “They want to go on that adventure with us, and we are thrilled to have them.”
The dream of discovering
“You can help scientists who are now at NASA and other organizations around the world to discover interesting things,” said Faber Burgos, a citizen scientist and science communicator from Colombia. “Truth be told, I’ve always dreamed of making history.”
Colombian citizen scientist Faber Burgos studied Modern Languages at the Colombian School of Industrial Careers and has a university degree in Classical Archaeology. Today, he is dedicated to disseminating science content through his social media accounts, focusing on children. In 2020, he and his team launched a balloon probe into the stratosphere with a camera that captured the curvature of the Earth, with the aim of demonstrating that the Earth is round. The video of that feat exceeds 97 million views on his Facebook account, earning him a Guinness World Record.
Credit: Courtesy of Faber Burgos Burgos has been involved in two projects for the past four years: the International Astronomical Search Collaboration (IASC), which searches the sky for potentially dangerous asteroids, and Backyard Worlds: Planet 9. This project uses data from NASA’s now-completed Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and its follow-up mission, NEOWISE, to search for brown dwarfs and a hypothetical ninth planet.
“There are really amazing participants in this project,” said Kuchner, who helped launch it in 2015. NASA’s WISE and NEOWISE missions detected about 2 billion sources in the sky. “So, the question is: Among those many sources, are any of them new unknowns?” he said.
The project has already found more than 4,000 brown dwarfs. These are Jupiter-sized objects—balls of gas that are too big to be planets, but too small to be stars. Volunteers have even helped discover a new type of brown dwarf.
Participants in the project are also hopeful they’ll find a hypothetical ninth planet, possibly Neptune-sized, in an orbit far beyond Pluto.
The Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 citizen science project asks volunteers to help search for new objects at the edge of our solar system. The assignment is to review images from NASA’s past WISE and NEOWISE missions in search of two types of astronomical objects: brown dwarfs(balls of gas the same size as Jupiter that have too little mass to be considered stars) and low-mass stars. Or, even, the hypothetical ninth planet of our Sun, known as Planet nine, or Planet X. The image shows an artist’s rendering of such a hypothetical world orbiting far from the Sun.
Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC) Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC) Burgos explained that analyzing the images is easy. “If it’s a moving object, it’s obviously going to be something of interest,” he said. “Usually, when you see these images, everything is still. But if there’s an object moving, you have to keep an eye on it.”
Once a citizen scientist marks the object across the full image sequence, they send the information to NASA scientists to evaluate.
“As a citizen scientist, I’m happy to do my bit and, hopefully, one day discover something very interesting,” he said. “That’s the beauty of NASA—it invites everyone to be a scientist. Here, it doesn’t matter what you are, but your desire to learn.”
The first step
To become a NASA citizen scientist, start by visiting the program’s website. There you’ll find a complete list of available projects with links to their respective sites. Some are available in Spanish and other languages. Many projects are also hosted on the Zooniverse platform, which has been available since 2006.
“Another cool way to get involved is to come to one of our live events,” said Kuchner. These are virtual events open to the public, where NASA scientists present their projects and invite people to participate. “Pick a project you like—and if it’s not fun, pick a different one,” he advised. “There are wonderful relationships to be had if you reach out to scientists and other participants.”
Another way for people to get involved in citizen science is to participate in the annual NASA International Space Apps Challenge, the largest global hackathon. This two-day event creates innovation through international collaboration, providing an opportunity for participants to use NASA’s free and open data and agency partners’ space-based data to tackle real-world problems on Earth and in space. The next NASA International Space Apps Challenge will be October 4-5, 2025.
Credit: NASA Age is not the limit
People of all ages can be citizen scientists. Some projects are kid-friendly, such as Nemo-Net, an iPad game that invites participants to color coral reefs to help sort them. “I’d like to encourage young people to start there—or try a project with one of the older people in their life,” Kuchner said.
Citizen science can also take place in classrooms. In the Growing Beyond Earth project, teachers and students run experiments on how to grow plants in space for future missions. The IASC project also works with high schools to help students detect asteroids.
A student waters small plants inside a Growing Beyond Earth citizen science project grow box.
Credit: NASA Projects by the community, for the community
GLOBE Observer is another initiative with an international network of teachers and students. The platform offers a range of projects—many in Spanish—that invite people to collect data using their cell phones.
One of the most popular is the GLOBE Mosquito Habitat Mapper, which tracks the migration and spread of mosquitoes that carry diseases. “It’s a way to help save lives—tracking the vectors that transmit malaria and Zika, among others,” Kuchner said.
Other GLOBE projects explore everything from ground cover to cloud types. Some use astronomical phenomena visible to everyone. For example, during the 2024 total solar eclipse, participants measured air temperature using their phones and shared that data with NASA scientists.
The full experience of doing science
No prior studies are needed, but many volunteers go on to collaborate on—or even lead—scientific research. More than 500 NASA citizen scientists have co-authored scientific publications.
One of them is Hugo Durantini Luca, from Córdoba, Argentina, who has participated in 17 published articles, with more on the way. For years, he explored various science projects, looking for one where he could contribute more actively.
Durantini Luca participated in one of NASA’s first citizen science projects, launched in 2006: Stardust at home. Still ongoing, this project invites volunteers to participate in the search for evidence of interstellar dust on the aerogel and aluminum foil collectors returned by NASA’s Stardust mission, using an online virtual microscope.
Credit: NASA He participated in NASA’s first citizen science project, Stardust@home, which invites users to search for interstellar dust particles in collectors from the Stardust mission, using a virtual microscope.
In 2014, he discovered Disk Detective, a project that searches for disks around stars, where planets may form. By looking at images from the WISE and NEOWISE missions, participants can help understand how worlds are born and how solar systems evolve.
“And, incidentally, if we find planets or some sign of life, all the better,” said Durantini Luca.
Although that remains a dream, they have made other discoveries—like a new kind of stellar disk called the “Peter Pan Disk,” which appears young even though the star it surrounds is not.
Durantini Luca participated in one of NASA’s first citizen science projects, launched in 2006: Stardust at home. Still ongoing, this project invites volunteers to participate in the search for evidence of interstellar dust on the aerogel and aluminum foil collectors returned by NASA’s Stardust mission, using an online virtual microscope.
Credit: NASA Science in person
In 2016, Durantini Luca got the chance to support Disk Detective with his own observations from the southern hemisphere. He traveled to El Leoncito Astronomical Complex (CASLEO), an observatory in San Juan, Argentina. There, he learned to use a spectrograph—an instrument that breaks down starlight to analyze its composition.
He treasures that experience. “Curiously, it was the first time in my life I used a telescope,” he said.
In 2016, citizen scientist Hugo Durantini Luca traveled for 18 hours to the El Leoncito Astronomical Complex (CASLEO), at the foot of the Andes Mountains. From there, he made observations of a candidate star of the Disk Detective project.
Credit: Luciano García While in-person opportunities are rare, both virtual and physical events help build community. Citizen scientists stay in touch weekly through various channels.
“Several of us are friends already—after so many years of bad jokes on calls,” said Durantini Luca.
“People send me pictures of how they met,” said Kuchner. He said the program has even changed how he does science. “It’s changed my life,” he said. “Science is already cool—and this makes it even cooler.”
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Last Updated Apr 29, 2025 Related Terms
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What does the future of space exploration look like? At the 2025 FIRST Robotics World Championship in Houston, NASA gave student robotics teams and industry leaders a first-hand look—complete with lunar rovers, robotic arms, and real conversations about shaping the next era of discovery.
Students and mentors experience NASA exhibits at the 2025 FIRST Robotics World Championship at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston from April 16-18. NASA/Sumer Loggins NASA engaged directly with the Artemis Generation, connecting with more than 55,000 students and 75,000 parents and mentors. Through interactive exhibits and discussions, students explored the agency’s robotic technologies, learned about STEM career paths and internships, and gained insight into NASA’s bold vision for the future. Many expressed interest in internships—and dreams of one day contributing to NASA’s missions to explore the unknown for the benefit of all humanity.
Multiple NASA centers participated in the event, including Johnson Space Center in Houston; Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; Kennedy Space Center in Florida; Langley Research Center in Virginia; Ames Research Center in California; Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans; Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California; Glenn Research Center in Cleveland; Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; and the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility in West Virginia. Each brought unique technologies and expertise to the exhibit floor.
FIRST Robotics attendees explore NASA’s exhibit and learn about the agency’s mission during the event.NASA/Robert Markowitz Displays highlighted key innovations such as:
Automated Reconfigurable Mission Adaptive Digital Assembly Systems: A modular system of small robots and smart algorithms that can autonomously assemble large-scale structures in space. Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration: A team of small lunar rovers designed to operate independently, navigating and making decisions together without human input. Lightweight Surface Manipulation System AutoNomy Capabilities Development for Surface Operations and Construction: A robotic arm system built for lunar construction tasks, developed through NASA’s Early Career Initiative. Space Exploration Vehicle: A pressurized rover prototype built for human exploration of planetary surfaces, offering attendees a look at how future astronauts may one day travel across the Moon or Mars. Mars Perseverance Rover: An exhibit detailing the rover’s mission to search for ancient microbial life and collect samples for future return to Earth. In-Situ Resource Utilization Pilot Excavator: A lunar bulldozer-dump truck hybrid designed to mine and transport regolith, supporting long-term exploration through the Artemis campaign. Visitors view NASA’s Space Exploration Vehicle on display.NASA/Robert Markowitz “These demonstrations help students see themselves in NASA’s mission and the next frontier of lunar exploration,” said Johnson Public Affairs Specialist Andrew Knotts. “They can picture their future as part of the team shaping how we live and work in space.”
Since the FIRST Championship relocated to Houston in 2017, NASA has mentored more than 250 robotics teams annually, supporting elementary through high school students. The agency continued that tradition for this year’s event, and celebrated the fusion of science, engineering, and creativity that defines both robotics and space exploration.
NASA’s booth draws crowds at FIRST Robotics 2025 with hands-on exhibits. NASA/Robert Markowitz Local students also had the chance to learn about the Texas High School Aerospace Scholars program, which offers Texas high school juniors hands-on experience designing space missions and solving engineering challenges—an early gateway into NASA’s world of exploration.
As the competition came to a close, students and mentors were already looking ahead to the next season—energized by new ideas, strengthened friendships, and dreams of future missions.
NASA volunteers at the FIRST Robotics World Championship on April 17, 2025. NASA/Robert Markowitz “It was a true privilege to represent NASA to so many inspiring students, educators, and mentors,” said Jeanette Snyder, aerospace systems engineer for Gateway. “Not too long ago, I was a robotics student myself, and I still use skills I developed through FIRST Robotics in my work as a NASA engineer. Seeing so much excitement around engineering and technology makes me optimistic for the future of space exploration. I can’t wait to see these students become the next generation of NASA engineers and world changers.”
With the enthusiastic support of volunteers, mentors, sponsors, and industry leaders, and NASA’s continued commitment to STEM outreach, the future of exploration is in bold, capable hands.
See the full event come to life in the panorama videos below.
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By NASA
Landing on the Moon is not easy, particularly when a crew or spacecraft must meet exacting requirements. For Artemis missions to the lunar surface, those requirements include an ability to land within an area about as wide as a football field in any lighting condition amid tough terrain.
NASA’s official lunar landing requirement is to be able to land within 50 meters (164 feet) of the targeted site and developing precision tools and technologies is critically important to mission success.
NASA engineers recently took a major step toward safe and precise landings on the Moon – and eventually Mars and icy worlds – with a successful field test of hazard detection technology at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Shuttle Landing Facility in Florida.
A joint team from the Aeroscience and Flight Mechanics Division at NASA’s Johnson Space Center’s in Houston and Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, achieved this huge milestone in tests of the Goddard Hazard Detection Lidar from a helicopter at Kennedy in March 2025.
NASA’s Hazard Detection Lidar field test team at Kennedy Space Center’s Shuttle Landing Facility in Florida in March 2025. NASA The new lidar system is one of several sensors being developed as part of NASA’s Safe & Precise Landing – Integrated Capabilities Evolution (SPLICE) Program, a Johnson-managed cross-agency initiative under the Space Technology Mission Directorate to develop next-generation landing technologies for planetary exploration. SPLICE is an integrated descent and landing system composed of avionics, sensors, and algorithms that support specialized navigation, guidance, and image processing techniques. SPLICE is designed to enable landing in hard-to-reach and unknown areas that are of potentially high scientific interest.
The lidar system, which can map an area equivalent to two football fields in just two seconds, is a crucial program component. In real time and compensating for lander motion, it processes 15 million short pulses of laser light to quickly scan surfaces and create real-time, 3D maps of landing sites to support precision landing and hazard avoidance.
Those maps will be read by the SPLICE Descent and Landing Computer, a high-performance multicore computer processor unit that analyzes all SPLICE sensor data and determines the spacecraft’s velocity, altitude, and terrain hazards. It also computes the hazards and determines a safe landing location. The computer was developed by the Avionics Systems Division at Johnson as a platform to test navigation, guidance, and flight software. It previously flew on Blue Origin’s New Shepard booster rocket.
The NASA team prepares the Descent and Landing Computer for Hazard Detection Lidar field testing at Kennedy Space Center. NASA For the field test at Kennedy, Johnson led test operations and provided avionics and guidance, navigation, and control support. Engineers updated the computer’s firmware and software to support command and data interfacing with the lidar system. Team members from Johnson’s Flight Mechanics branch also designed a simplified motion compensation algorithm and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California contributed a hazard detection algorithm, both of which were added to the lidar software by Goddard. Support from NASA contractors Draper Laboratories and Jacobs Engineering played key roles in the test’s success.
Primary flight test objectives were achieved on the first day of testing, allowing the lidar team time to explore different settings and firmware updates to improve system performance. The data confirmed the sensor’s capability in a challenging, vibration-heavy environment, producing usable maps. Preliminary review of the recorded sensor data shows excellent reconstruction of the hazard field terrain.
A Hazard Detection Lidar scan of a simulated hazard field at Kennedy Space Center (left) and a combined 3D map identifying roughness and slope hazards. NASA Beyond lunar applications, SPLICE technologies are being considered for use on Mars Sample Return, the Europa Lander, Commercial Lunar Payload Services flights, and Gateway. The DLC design is also being evaluated for potential avionics upgrades on Artemis systems.
Additionally, SPLICE is supporting software tests for the Advancement of Geometric Methods for Active Terrain Relative Navigation (ATRN) Center Innovation Fund project, which is also part of Johnson’s Aeroscience and Flight Mechanics Division. The ATRN is working to develop algorithms and software that can use data from any active sensor – one measuring signals that were reflected, refracted, or scattered by a body’s surface or its atmosphere – to accurately map terrain and provide absolute and relative location information. With this type of system in place, spacecraft will not need external lighting sources to find landing sites.
With additional suborbital flight tests planned through 2026, the SPLICE team is laying the groundwork for safer, more autonomous landings on the Moon, Mars, and beyond. As NASA prepares for its next era of exploration, SPLICE will be a key part of the agency’s evolving landing, guidance, and navigation capabilities.
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“The PRIME-1 mission proved that our hardware works in the harshest environment we’ve ever tested it in,” said Janine Captain, PRIME-1 co-principal investigator and research chemist at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “While it may not have gone exactly to plan, this is a huge step forward as we prepare to send astronauts back to the Moon and build a sustainable future there.”
Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 mission launched to the Moon on Feb. 26, 2025, from NASA Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39A, as part of the company’s second Moon delivery for NASA under the agency’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis campaign. The IM-2 Nova-C lunar lander, named Athena, carried PRIME-1 and its suite of two instruments: a drill known as TRIDENT (The Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain), designed to bring lunar soil to the surface; and a mass spectrometer, Mass Spectrometer Observing Lunar Operations (MSOLO), to study TRIDENT’s drill cuttings for the presence of gases that could one day help provide propellant or breathable oxygen to future Artemis explorers.
The IM-2 mission touched down on the lunar surface on March 6, just around 1,300 feet (400 meters) from its intended landing site of Mons Mouton, a lunar plateau near the Moon’s South Pole. The Athena lander was resting on its side inside a crater preventing it from recharging its solar cells, resulting in an end of the mission.
“We were supposed to have 10 days of operation on the Moon, and what we got was closer to 10 hours,” said Julie Kleinhenz, NASA’s lead systems engineer for PRIME-1, as well as the in-situ resource utilization system capability lead deputy for the agency. “It was 10 hours more than most people get so I am thrilled to have been a part of it.”
Kleinhenz has spent nearly 20 years working on how to use lunar resources for sustained operations. In-situ resource utilization harnesses local natural resources at mission destinations. This enables fewer launches and resupply missions and significantly reduces the mass, cost, and risk of space exploration. With NASA poised to send humans back to the Moon and on to Mars, generating products for life support, propellants, construction, and energy from local materials will become increasingly important to future mission success.
“In-situ resource utilization is the key to unlocking long-term exploration, and PRIME-1 is helping us lay this foundation for future travelers.” Captain said.
The PRIME-1 technology also set out to answer questions about the properties of lunar regolith, such as soil strength. This data could help inform the design of in-situ resource utilization systems that would use local resources to create everything from landing pads to rocket fuel during Artemis and later missions.
“Once we got to the lunar surface, TRIDENT and MSOLO both started right up, and performed perfectly. From a technology demonstrations standpoint, 100% of the instruments worked.” Kleinhenz said.
The lightweight, low-power augering drill built by Honeybee Robotics, known as TRIDENT, is 1 meter long and features rotary and percussive actuators that convert energy into the force needed to drill. The drill was designed to stop at any depth as commanded from the ground and deposit its sample on the surface for analysis by MSOLO, a commercial off-the-shelf mass spectrometer modified by engineers and technicians at NASA Kennedy to withstand the harsh lunar environment. Designed to measure the composition of gases in the vicinity of the lunar lander, both from the lander and from the ambient exosphere, MSOLO can help NASA analyze the chemical makeup of the lunar soil and study water on the surface of the Moon.
Once on the Moon, the actuators on the drill performed as designed, completing multiple stages of movement necessary to drill into the lunar surface. Prompted by commands from technicians on Earth, the auger rotated, the drill extended to its full range, the percussion system performed a hammering motion, and the PRIME-1 team turned on an embedded core heater in the drill and used internal thermal sensors to monitor the temperature change.
While MSOLO was able to perform several scans to detect gases, researchers believe from the initial data that the gases detected were all anthropogenic, or human in origin, such as gases vented from spacecraft propellants and traces of Earth water. Data from PRIME-1 accounted for some of the approximately 7.5 gigabytes of data collected during the IM-2 mission, and researchers will continue to analyze the data in the coming months and publish the results.
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Multinational corporations are using the M2M Intelligence platform in data centers and other settings. The system offers automated, secure communications on a ground-based global 5G network. Getty Images Artificial intelligence (AI) is advancing rapidly, as intelligent software proves capable of various tasks. The technology usually requires a “human in the loop” to train it and ensure accuracy. But long before the arrival of today’s generative artificial intelligence, a different kind of AI was born with the help of NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley — one that only exists between machines, running without any human intervention.
In 2006, Geoffrey Barnard founded Machine-to-Machine Intelligence Corp. (M2Mi) at Ames’ NASA Research Park, envisioning an automated, satellite-based communication network. NASA Ames established a Space Act Agreement with the company to develop artificial intelligence that would automate communications, privacy, security, and resiliency between satellites and ground-based computers.
Central to the technology was automating a problem-solving approach known as root cause analysis, which NASA has honed over decades. This methodology seeks to identify not only the immediate cause of a problem but also all the factors that contributed to the cause. This would allow a network to identify its own issues and fix itself.
NASA Ames’ director of nanotechnology at the time wanted to develop a communications network based on small, low-powered satellites, so Ames supported M2Mi in developing the necessary technology.
Barnard, now CEO and chief technology officer of Tiburon, California-based branch of M2Mi, said NASA’s support laid the foundation for his company, which employs the same technology in a ground-based network.
The company’s M2M Intelligence software performs secure, resilient, automated communications on a system that runs across hundreds of networks, connecting thousands of devices, many of which were not built to communicate with each other. The M2Mi company worked with Vodafone of Berkshire, England, to build a worldwide network across more than 500 smaller networks in over 190 countries. The companies M2M Wireless and TriGlobal have begun using M2M Intelligence for transportation logistics.
With NASA’s help, emerging industries are getting the boost they need to rapidly develop technologies to enhance our lives.
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Last Updated Apr 29, 2025 Related Terms
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