NASA Selects 19 New Citizen Science Proposals in 2026
So far, 2026 has seen a flood of successes for volunteers who do NASA science, exemplifying NASA’s commitment to gold-standard science—transparent, reproducible and intrinsically collaborative. The Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project announced that their project volunteers have now discovered most of the known brown dwarfs, celestial objects that are similar to planets. The Zooniverse platform, […]
In 2026, NASA's Science Mission Directorate has chosen 19 new citizen science proposals to expand opportunities for volunteers to engage in NASA science. The Citizen Science Seed Funding Program (CSSFP-25) funded twelve of these projects. The Rogue Worlds Project, led by Jacqueline Faherty from the American Museum of Natural History, aims to involve volunteers in searching SPHEREx data for super Jupiters using the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer mission.
Another project, Quantifying the calibrations between intrinsic galaxy merger timescales with visual pair/tidal-feature classifications, led by Kameswara Bharadwaj Mantha of the University of Missouri, seeks volunteer assistance in classifying realistic mock images of galaxies to study galaxy mergers and their evolution. Overlap Zoo, led by Benne Holwerda of the University of Louisville, focuses on identifying galaxy pairs in overlapping light and dust, while Planet Hunters Roman, led by Bernard Gaudi of the Ohio State University, invites volunteers to detect exoplanets in data from NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
Heliophysics projects include Space Weather UnderGround, led by Hyunju Connor at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, which engages volunteers in monitoring Earth's magnetosphere using magnetometer arrays. The Sonified Plasma Wave Characterization project, led by Lauren Blum of the University of Colorado, Boulder, transforms plasma wave data into sound signals for analysis.
Finally, the IMPACT project, led by Muhammad Fraz Bashir of the University of California, Los Angeles, uses citizen scientists to compare satellite and ground-based measurements of energetic particles to improve GPS and space weather prediction.
Written by urgent.news from NASA's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
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- NASA Selects 19 New Citizen Science Proposals in 2026 science.nasa.gov
