NASA picks nineteen citizen science proposals across astrophysics, heliophysics and planetary science

28 October 2026

NASA's Science Mission Directorate has selected nineteen proposals that will let volunteers take part in research. Twelve come through the Citizen Science Seed Funding Program, which helps scientists build such projects: four in astrophysics, six in heliophysics and two in planetary science. The astrophysics set includes the Rogue Worlds Project, which searches SPHEREx data for free-floating planets and brown dwarfs, and Planet Hunters Roman, which looks for exoplanets found by microlensing. Heliophysics projects range from a low-cost magnetometer array in Alaska to sonified plasma wave signals. One planetary project maps lunar iron hotspots using Moon Mineralogy Mapper data. The remaining seven teams come under the Science Activation Program; they include Sungrazer 2.0, in which volunteers hunt comets in SOHO and STEREO images, Telescopes for All, which opens 22 robotic telescopes to the public, and ARK, which scans Antarctic satellite imagery for changes affecting penguins, seals and whales.