Projects
Shoemaker NEO Grants
A century after an exploding object from space leveled 2,000 square kilometers of forest in Tunguska, Siberia, how prepared is Earth to avoid disaster from the skies? The Planetary Society's year-long program, Target Earth, is focusing attention on the dangers our planet faces from near Earth objects (NEOs) with a variety of projects, including the newest call for proposals for the Society's Gene Shoemaker Near Earth Object Grants. The deadline for Gene Shoemaker Grant Proposals is September 30, 2008.
Since its founding, The Planetary Society has actively supported a number of efforts to discover and characterize the population of 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 Near Earth Asteroids 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 contributing to vital NEO research.
To date, the Society has awarded 29 Shoemaker NEO grants totaling more than $184,000 to observers around the world. Grant recipients have played critical roles in tracking small asteroids that were discovered by major asteroid survey programs, and providing the crucial follow-up observations to determine precise orbits for these objects. They have also contributed NEO discoveries and characterizations of the properties of NEOs. You can follow the efforts of past grant recipients through our regular Shoemaker NEO Grant project updates.
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