Presentation #306.07 in the session Innovation and Discovery in Solar and Space Physics Enabled by Citizen Science.
The NASA-funded Sungrazer Project is one of longest-running NASA citizen science efforts which has enabled citizen scientists to discover well over 4,000 previously undiscovered comets and enable a wealth of science in both planetary science and heliophysics. In this talk I will give a brief recap of the Sungrazer Project, its major milestones and science highlights, current status, and anticipated future direction. I will also talk about some of the lessons we have learned — both good and bad — from operating a limited-budget citizen science effort for over two decades. Finally, I will briefly talk about a recently spin-off from the Sungrazer Project — a crowd-sourced Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning challenge that was driven entirely by Project discoveries.