Wild 2
 

UC Berkeley's Stardust@Home intersellar dirt project

NASA's Stardust spacecraft landed in Utah this week. Stardust's main mission was to chase the comet Wild 2 and capture material the cloud of dust and gas that surrounds it. But during it's seven year journey Stardust also trapped a sprinkling of dust from the interstellar stream that flows through the Solar System. Scientists expect to find about 45 grains in the craft's gel collectors and need volunteers to help screen 1.6 million scanned pictures with a web-based "virtual microscope". Through Stardust@Home volunteers will have to go through a web-based training session but will have the chance to name any dust grains they find. Possible virtual contamination by zombie mutagens are a bonus. Looking for something passive, try screening radio telescope data for exterrestrial intelligence with SETI@home, help cure diseases caused by protein misfolding with Folding@Home, or search for other "distributed computing" projects.

Stardust@Home

NASA - Stardust

SETI@home

Folding@Home