maps

Citizen scientists and bored netizens can now help NASA map out the Martian surface for future astronaut explorers. Even kids can enjoy the thrills of Mars cartography -- namely counting craters and aligning higher-resolution images on top of a low-res map.

The U.S. space agency teamed up with Microsoft to create the online games at a newly launched website. Players can rack up reputation points for a robotic animal avatar by placing three images at a time on a Martian map, starting with the Valles Marineris canyon.

Lost galactic hitchhikers can now rejoice when they visit our corner of the Milky Way. A new sky map created by a NASA spacecraft shows the boundaries of our solar system in comparison to the rest of the interstellar neighborhood.

The boundaries are defined by our sun's heliosphere -- a protective bubble created by the solar wind that travels outward and collides with incoming interstellar radiation. That typically invisible boundary became visible through energetic neutral atoms created in the region that speed toward the sun at velocities ranging up to 2.4 million mph.

I've always been a fan of the pixel-art illustration style, whether it's the latest eBoy poster or illustrations by Quick Honey featured in our own pages. But this, I'm afraid, takes the ultimate pixel-art cake: a ginormous, ultra-high-resolution pixel-art map of Hong Kong that's zoomable, brosweable and searchable just like a Google Map.

Using Google Earth, his own legwork, and a slew of amateur spies, Curtis Melvin has mapped out all of North Korea's secrets. Called "North Korea Uncovered", the project has pinpointed everything from nuclear facilities to restaurants, from anti-aircraft arsenals to a waterslide.

Google Earth in its current form went live in June 2005. In addition to allowing users to fly to their childhood homes, zoom in on potential vacation spots, and explore under the sea and atop the world's highest peaks, the virtual mapping software has proven instrumental in a number of scientific discoveries -- several in 2009 alone. Here's a look back at some of the highlights.

Any guesses on future Google Earth discoveries? Will Google Earth be an ever-more-important scientific tool in the future? Post in the comments.

The tsunami that struck Crescent City, California, on April 25, 1992, wasn't a destructive one -- the waves were relatively small, and no loss of life or significant damage resulted. But it was still an important tsunami event, in that it illustrated how quickly a wave can arrive at nearby coastal communities and how long the at-risk period can last. The tsunami occurred after a 7.1 earthquake shook the coast of Cape Mendocino on California's north coast, generating a series of tsunami waves.

What do you get when you ask a former Disney animator and veteran NASA climate geomorphologist to help explain global change?

How about cartoon satellites and a laser that can write your name on Titan?

Using gaming technology, animators and programmers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory designed a 3-D, browser-based program that lets people fly along with 15 NASA Earth observation satellites in real time. The program, called "Eyes on Earth 3-D," requires a plugin that's compatible with almost any Web browser.