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 proposals for new citizen science projects. These initiatives aim to promote collaborative research and involve volunteers in various scientific investigations. The Citizen Science Seed Funding Program (CSSFP-25) awarded twelve new proposals to scientists and experts.
One project, led by Jacqueline Faherty from the American Museum of Natural History, named "The Rogue Worlds Project," seeks to engage volunteers in discovering super Jupiters using data from NASA's SPHEREx mission. The SPHEREx observatory maps the entire sky in near-infrared wavelengths.
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, investigates galaxy mergers to better understand galaxy evolution over time. Volunteers will classify mock images of galaxies to aid in this research.
"Overlap Zoo: Cosmic Light Tables for Galaxy Transparency" led by Benne Holwerda of the University of Louisville involves classifying overlapping galaxy pairs to determine how much dust they contain. This project is currently live and invites participants to join in.
"Planet Hunters Roman: Extending Citizen Science to Planetary Microlensing" led by Bernard Gaudi of the Ohio State University aims to spot exoplanets using NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope data. Participants will identify exoplanets based on their ability to bend starlight.
Six additional projects were selected, including "Space Weather UnderGround: Deploying a Low-Cost Magnetometer Array with Citizens for Heliophysics Research" led by Hyunju Connor of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, "A Citizen Science Initiative for Sonified Plasma Wave Characterization" led by Lauren Blum of the University of Colorado, Boulder, "Revealing the Consequences of Foreshock Transients for Earth’s Magnetospheric System Through Participatory Science" led by Wenli Mo of Johns Hopkins University, "IMPACT: Interactive Magnetospheric Particle Analysis and Citizen Technology" led by Muhammad Fraz Bashir of the University of California, Los Angeles, and "Unlocking Clues About Particles and Magnetospheric Systems Through Citizen Science" led by an unnamed Principal Investigator.
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- NASA Selects 19 New Citizen Science Proposals in 2026 science.nasa.gov
