The U.S. space agency and Microsoft want you to help count Martian craters in the name of science
By Jeremy Hsu Posted 11.18.2009 at 1:47 pm 7 Comments

Map Mars One crater, two craters ... NASA

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.

Related Articles

DARPA Celebrates Internet Anniversary with Bizarre Balloon Challenge
Crowd-Sourced Star Wars Remake Gives 472 Geeks Their 15 Seconds of Fame
Camera Firmware Hackers Build a Fully Open-Source Digicam

Tags

Technology, Jeremy Hsu, craters, games, maps, Mars, martian, nasa, Red Planet, surface, valles marineris
This goes beyond just providing mild amusement for the Internet hordes. NASA hopes that the crowd-sourcing can harness the efforts of thousands to create better Mars maps and smoother zoom-in views, which might allow scientists to better interpret Martian surface changes. Don't worry if you get one or two craters wrong, either, because there's probably another dozen people who got it right.

Crowd-sourcing has previously helped create everything from Star Wars remakes to better movie recommendations on Netflix. Even the Pentagon's mad science lab DARPA has tapped into crowd-sourcing as a way of leveraging social networks in a bizarre balloon-finding competition.

Perhaps Microsoft's involvement might mean that this fun exercise in intellectual child labor could even become available someday for the Xbox Live community. If, you know, shooting down drones in Modern Warfare 2 isn't doing it for you.

7 Comments

Link to this comment
GTO
11/18/09 at 3:16 pm

Mental Slavery. I'm in

--GTO--

Link to this comment
Azorus
11/19/09 at 2:29 am

Sweet!

Link to this comment
uncleiroh13
11/19/09 at 12:15 pm

I will follow your demands master NASA or not

Link to this comment
Volt
11/19/09 at 10:42 pm

Now, the question is, do we get to name them if we are the first? Doubtful, but I'd prefer to have craters named something other than MC-12k13DI84C/w501...

Link to this comment
PSPSX
03/18/10 at 9:01 am

This is maybe a good idea for kids to explore Mars.

www.pspsx.com

Link to this comment
RangerJim

from Houston, TX

08/15/10 at 8:37 pm

A bit late. I was helping to ID craters for NASA on my old Mac+ back in the mid-'90s, but that was in B/W.
I'll have to check this out....


138 years of Popular Science at your fingertips.

Innovation Challenges

Make your ideas part of the revolution
Learn morePowered by Innocentive



Popular Science+ For iPad

Each issue has been completely reimagined for your iPad. See our amazing new vision for magazines that goes far beyond the printed page



Download Our App

Stay up to date on the latest news of the future of science and technology from your iPhone or Android phone with full articles, images and offline viewing



Follow Us On Twitter

Featuring every article from the magazine and website, plus links from around the Web. Also see our PopSci DIY feed


February 2012: The Future of Fun

Science is reinventing play, from extreme sports to gamification to ridiculous roller coasters to the playgrounds of tomorrow, and this issue is chock full of fun. Also, on a less fun note: Did global warming destroy my hometown?


circ-top-header.gif
circ-cover.gif