NASA

An artist's conception shows a robotic probe, powered by a solar electric propulsion system, closing in to corral an asteroid. NASA is aiming to send out such a probe in 2017.

By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

NASA's latest "Grand Challenge" is a biggie: Can you think of better ways to find potentially threatening near-Earth asteroids and do something about those threats? Your ideas could become part of the space agency's vision for the next decade.

The Asteroid Grand Challenge was announced on Tuesday at NASA Headquarters in Washington, but a lot of the details still have to be filled in. For instance, what are the specific tasks to be covered by the challenge? How much money will it take to stimulate the required innovations? Over the next month, NASA is gathering ideas under the terms of a request for information, with the aim of setting up a game plan for the years ahead.

"The purpose of the Grand Challenge is a call to action to continue the awareness around the issue of asteroid threats," Jason Kessler, NASA's program executive for the Asteroid Grand Challenge, told NBC News.

The program complements NASA's initiative to identify and bring back an asteroid so that astronauts can study it in the vicinity of the moon. It also meshes withNASA's long-running program to identify near-Earth asteroids.

"NASA already is working to find asteroids that might be a threat to our planet, and while we have found 95 percent of the large asteroids near theEarth's orbit, we need to find all those that might be a threat to Earth," NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said in an agency news release. "This Grand Challenge is focused on detecting and characterizing asteroids and learning how to deal with potential threats. We will also harness public engagement, open innovation and citizen science to help solve this global problem."

All this interest in asteroids got an extra jolt in February when a meteor blast sent a shock wave sweeping over Siberia, injuring more than 1,000 people. The 55-foot-wide (17-meter-wide) space rock behind that flare-up was relatively small, as space threats go, but even somewhat larger rocks are difficult to detect in advance using current tools. The Grand Challenge is meant to stimulate the development of new tools and techniques, Kessler said.

For instance, the program might encourage the development of nanosatellites equipped with expandable pop-out mirrors that could do a better job of detecting dim asteroids. It could offer prizes for improving the software that models an asteroid's shape. Or it could establish school observation networks to bring the power of crowdsourcing to asteroid detection.

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NASA wants you ... to join Grand Challenge to hunt down asteroids