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Citizens in Space, a project of the United States Rocket Academy, plans to fly citizen-science experiments on fully reusable suborbital spacecraft that are now being developed by US companies.

Citizens in Space has acquired an initial contract for 10 flights with XCOR Aerospace, the Mojave, California-based company that is developing the Lynx spacecraft. It expects to acquire additional flights from XCOR and other companies in the future.

Citizens in Space is currently training three astronaut candidates to fly as operators. It will select and train seven additional astronaut candidates over the next 12 to 24 months. Citizens in Space is also inviting citizen scientists to build 100 experiments to fly on those flights, which are expected to begin in late 2013 or early 2014.

In addition to the general call for experiments, Citizens in Space will offer a cash prize for certain experiments deemed to be of special importance.

Adventurers and Scientist for Conservation is a unique initiative that helps create working reationships between scientists and adventure athletes to perform some truly unique research. Projects have been created all over the world and by groups of all kinds. The project even provides training for adventurers to become adventure-scientists.

The exciting benefits from these projects are numerous. Adventurers benefit by contributing to meaningful conservation research in areas that they visit. Additionally, scientists benefit from attaining inexpensive data that would have been previously hard or impossible to acquire. By no means, however are these adventure research projects limited to avid adventurers and professional scientists. Programs can be created anywhere for any age group. The goal of the project is to train and inspire the next generation of citizen scientists. In short, Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation will help you create a project, recruit participants, and start an Adventure Science project near you!

Leafsnap is an exciting new mobile app that is designed to help citizen scientists identify and locate tree species from photographs and ultimately help the scientific world develop a better understanding of biodiversity. Developed by Columbia University, the University of Maryland, and the Smithsonian Institution, Leafsnap contains a unique visual recognition software that helps users identify species from the photographs taken straight from your iphone or ipad.

The app is completely free and will be the first in a series of apps that takes advantage of the newly developed recognition software. The app also contains high-resolution photos of the leaves, flowers, fruit, seeds, and bark of all sorts of species, and is a wonderful visual field guide. Currently, the species of New York City and Washington D.C. are supported, but this list will be expanded in the future.

The app is very user friendly and easy to use. With each photo of a leaf you take, the photo, species information, and geo-location is all automatically sent to the Leafsnap database for scientists to study species distribution.

This Leafsnap website shows the tree species included so far, a visual map of the collectors that have recently contributed, and more information on the project. Contributing to citizen science couldn’t be easier than with this visually engaging app! Get snapping and identify a tree near you!

Attention amateur astronomers: it’s time to Target Asteroids!

Amateur astronomers everywhere now have a chance to contribute to NASA’s long-term research of Near Earth Objects (NEOs)! The project starts in April 2012 and continues for a whole decade, with data collected directly supporting the efforts of NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex mission.

The OSIRIS-Rex mission, Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security – Regolith Explorer mission, launches in 2016 and will reach the asteroid 1999 RQ36 in 2019, staying for over 500 days and then returning with 6 grams of material to earth in 2023.

By observing an established list of NEOs, you will have the unique opportunity to contribute to meaningful science and help direct future research and the goals of missions like OSIRIS-Rex. Amateur astronomers have a particularly valuable ability to make observations nightly, and in many cases, can make very good quality observations.

So, fire up your telescopes and start targeting some steroids today!

The Snake Count needs citizen scientists to map and track snake distributions across North America. This is your chance to take an active role in in snake conservation.

2012 Count Dates:
Spring: May 12-20
Fall: September 15-23

The goal of the Snake Count is to document every species of snake that occurs in the United States in a single time period. The data collected during the Snake Count will be used by the Center for Snake Conservation to map the current distribution of snakes. The data collected will confirm the existence of some rare species and provide baseline data to help monitor selected populations of more common species in the future.

By participating in this project, you'll learn how to find and identify snakes, and your efforts will help scientists identify conservation concerns for snakes across North America. Everyone who participates in the Snake Count does it for the joy of being outdoors and helping promote the conservation of our most unique predators--snakes!