CITIZEN SCIENCE PROJECTS TO TRY AT HOME
HOW YOU CAN GET INVOLVED
If you are interested in becoming a citizen scientist there are a variety of projects that you can get involved in – depending on how ‘hands-on’ you want to be
Citizen science is a great way to gather and analyse large amounts of data with the aid of the general public. Collaboration between scientists and citizens has played an important role across scientific disciplines, especially in regards to space science. You don’t need to have any prior knowledge to be a citizen scientist, just a willingness to participate and a desire to aid scientific discovery.
One of the most notable citizen science projects in the history of space science was Operation Moonwatch. Established in 1956 as part of the International Geophysical Year (IGY), it was the brainchild of Fred Whipple, director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. The IGY was a worldwide effort to study Earth and its planetary environment, lasting from 1 July 1957 to 31 December 1958.
Many were sceptical about non-experts conducting research, but Operation Moonwatch soon became one of the most successful and long-running citizen science programs in history. The plan was that teams of observers around the world would track, time and document satellites passing over their location. The data would then be fed back to the computation centre and used to position Baker-Nunn cameras around the world, designed to keep an eye on low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites.
On 4 October 1957, the launch of Sputnik 1 caught the world by surprise. Although
