If you ever dreamed of doing a little science -- maybe classifying some Martian craters -- but didn't think you had the necessary skills, NASA has a program for you. And it just might save you and other U.S. taxpayers a buck or two.
An interactive online project called Clickworkers lets volunteers study decades-old pictures of Mars from the Viking spacecraft and pick out some of the thousands of craters that need classifying. It's the kind of tedium that most scientists might like to rise above. NASA bills the project as an experiment "to see if public volunteers, each working for a few minutes here and there, can do some routine science analysis."
So far, participation is good, said Bob Kanefsky, a software engineer who dreamed up the idea, built the software, and oversees the program on a contract basis for NASA. Between 8,000 and 12,000 craters a day are being analyzed. Some volunteers have returned over and over for weeks. But some 37 percent of the work has been done by one-time visitors.
Don't you need some formal scientific training for this?
"Absolutely not," Kanefsky says. "The whole idea is to see if non-scientists can help with the 95 percent of the task that requires only basic human abilities like recognizing pictures. If you know a mountain from a hole in the ground, you can be a crater-marking clickworker."
Participation couldn't be easier. Using web-based software that requires no downloading, a volunteer uses a mouse to make four clicks around the rim of a suspected crater. The software then outlines the crater in red.
For those who want to get more involved, classifying craters is a bit more challenging. The online software displays a crater, and asks you to decide if it is fresh, degraded, or if it is a "ghost" crater, one covered by overlying layers of soil. Visual examples of each classification are given.
With volunteers doing the bulk of the heavy lifting, the project's budget is less than $40,000.
Actually classifying craters requires some training, but an online tutorial provides instructions. Since the project began Nov. 17, volunteers have contributed nearly 300,000 crater-marking entries and more than 80,000 crater-classification entries.
For now, the pilot project does not promise any significant scientific returns. If the idea works, however, officials say it might be used to identify features in new images returned on a regular basis by current and future Mars missions. For that to happen, the project needs permanent funding.
Kanefsky said no decision has been made yet.
The project, at
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