Citizen Science

Some stars have planets. Others are orbited by brown dwarfs, balls of gas too massive to be planets, but too low-mass to be stars. Astronomers love these brown dwarf-star pairs because being paired with a star helps reveal a brown dwarf’s age. Ages of astronomical objects are often hard to measure, but essential for understanding […]

Posted June 17, 2026

Astrophysics Division

Citizen Science

Be a Clump Scout and Help Reveal Secrets of Stellar Nurseries

Help identify star-forming clumps in galaxy images, and help train machines to do the same.

Posted June 2, 2026

Citizen Science

NASA’s New Shock Detectives Project Invites Volunteers to Help Study Solar Wind

NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission has collected more than ten years of data from this zone – more than scientists can analyze alone. As Shock Detectives, you’ll help sort the chaotic from peaceful regions of the data, giving researchers a crucial set of clues.

Posted May 19, 2026

Citizen Science

Science & Research

Uncategorized

650 NASA Volunteers Have Co-Authored Scientific Papers

After a recent count, NASA Citizen Science is proud to report that more than 650 people who have volunteered to participate in NASA citizen science projects have co-authored peer-reviewed research papers with scientists on those project teams.

Posted May 5, 2026

Astrophysics

Astrophysics Division

Citizen Science

NASA Volunteers Double Known Population of Brown Dwarfs

A new paper from NASA’s Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project announces that volunteers have essentially doubled the number of known brown dwarfs, with over 3,000 new discoveries made over the past 10 years since the project began. Brown dwarfs are balls of gas the size of Jupiter, less massive than stars.

Posted May 5, 2026

Citizen Science

You Can Help Humans Thrive in Space

The second Artemis mission took four astronauts around the moon and back – the first crewed deep-space flight since 1972. Not everyone gets a chance to put on a space suit, but you can still be an important part of NASA’s human space exploration story by doing NASA science!

Posted April 27, 2026

Citizen Science

Planetary Science

Uncategorized

Volunteers Help NASA Astronauts Record Lunar Flashes

As NASA’s Artemis II astronauts zipped around the Moon in early April, they observed flashes of light caused by meteoroids hitting the lunar surface. At the same time, volunteers for the NASA-funded Impact Flash project scanned the Moon with their own telescopes and sent their videos to scientists to share what they saw from Earth.

Posted April 27, 2026

Citizen Science

Heliophysics

Heliophysics Division

Volunteers Discover Rare Space Weather Events Using Their Ears

Scientists are working to understand exactly how these waves behave, and the team behind NASA’s Heliophysics Audified: Resonances in Plasmas (HARP) citizen science project approaches this in a unique way: they compare the Earth’s magnetic field to a giant harp in space.

Posted April 17, 2026

Citizen Science

Community Partners

Earth Science Division

NASA Data Hackathon Inspires Community Action

On Jan. 31, students, library staff, researchers, and community members gathered at the University of Florida’s (UF) Marston Science Library for the Environmental Monitoring through Education, Research, and Geospatial Engagement (EMERGE) NASA Data Hackathon.

Posted March 23, 2026

Citizen Science

Earth Science

Earth Science Division

Hail Yeah! NASA Researchers Use Volunteer Observations for Hail Estimates

The bigger the hailstone, the more damage it can cause. But scientists find that predicting hailstone size can be challenging. How quickly does hail melt as it falls?

Posted March 17, 2026