Moon Mappers! Contribute to Lunar Science

By Nancy Atkinson - March 19, 2012 09:56 PM UTC | Planetary Science

Want to contribute to lunar science? The

MoonMappers

citizen science project is now live at CosmoQuest.org, and you can become part of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's science team by exploring high-resolution Lunar images and mapping out scientifically interesting features. MoonMappers has been in a

testing phase since January

, and during the beta period, early participants marked over 150,000 craters and more than 4,000 other interesting features. With your help, scientists will be able to better determine ages of different regions, find historic spikes in the impact rate, determine lunar regolith depth and what may lie under the crust, and make conclusions about the physics of giant explosions on the Moon's surface.

"Craters can reveal all sorts of different properties about the Moon and planetary surfaces in general," said project co-science lead Stuart Robbins, from the Southwest Research Institute.

The focus of MoonMappers is two-fold: to determine the most effective way to map craters on the Moon, and to use those maps to define areas for follow-up study.

MoonMappers is the first citizen science project launched by the

CosmoQuest online astronomy community

, the same place you can watch the

Weekly Space Hangouts

and

Universe Today's live interviews.

CosmoQuest's goal is to bring together the public, scientists, programmers, and educators who together will explore our Universe and contribute to science.

"Our goal is to create a community of people bent on together advancing our understanding of the universe; a community of people who are learning and doing science together," said CosmoQuest project director Pamela L. Gay, from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. "We're just getting started."

And MoonMappers is just the first in citizen science projects to be offered by CosmoQuest. Other Solar System science projects will soon be added to allow even more planetary surfaces to be explored. According to lead programmer, Cory Lehan, "We've developed flexible software that allows community members to go from discovering asteroids to exploring the Moon with ease. I can't wait to share what we have in the pipeline for the coming months."

Click here to check out MoonMappers

and join in contributing to lunar science.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com