[Editor’s note: Crowd sourcing “id that crater”. Check out my post, Race To The Moon with Richard Furno for the original effort 40 years ago to map the moon.]
Republished from National Public Radio.
We’re seeing the most detailed images of the moon’s surface ever captured from afar — thanks to NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO. The space probe carries a super-powerful camera, which photographs every bit of the moon’s surface for scientists to examine.
Only one problem: The LRO is doing such a good job that the scientists can’t keep up.
Enter Oxford astrophysicist Chris Lintott. He’s asking amateur astronomers to help review, measure and classify tens of thousands of moon photos streaming to Earth. He has set up the website MoonZoo.org, where anyone can log on, get trained and become a space explorer.
“We need anybody and everybody,” Lintott tells NPR’s Guy Raz on Weekend All Things Considered.
For example, “we ask people to count the craters that they can see … and that tells us all sorts of things about the history and the age of that bit of surface,” Lintott explains.