NASA's New Project Will Let You 'Patrol' Outer Space For New Planets

File Photo: Vehicle Assembly and Launch Control at Kennedy Space Center.

A new citizen science platform called Planet Patrol launched by NASA can help discover new planets beyond our own solar system. The Planet Patrol platform allows members of the public to collaborate with professional astronomers through images collected by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).

NASA announced that volunteers will help determine which TESS snapshots include signals from potential planets and which ones show planet impersonators. Citizen scientists can dive even deeper by learning more about the star in each image and by engaging with the Planet Patrol community.