Calling all Volunteers

I just found this wonderful program with the return of Stardust this weekend. In March volunteers will be able to help out on the project by inspecting the 1.5 million aerogel samples for interstellar dust. Discover a dust grain sample and you'll get to name it.

Volunteer scanners must pay close attention to aerogel images to pick out dust tracks from false signals. and must first pass an initial test using sample pictures, project officials said.

“We will throw in some calibration images that allow us to measure a volunteer’s efficiency,” Westphal said.

Westphal estimates that some 30,000 man-hours will be required to go through each image from Stardust’s aerogel sample return capsule four times.