[meteorite-list] New Website Gathering Public Input on NASA Mars Images

[Ron Baalke]

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4664

New Website Gathering Public Input on NASA Mars Images
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
July 22, 2015

Fast Facts:

* Vast areas near Mars' south pole have been imaged by the Context Camera 
on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

* At the citizen-science website "Planet Four: Terrains," volunteers help 
identify features for even higher-resolution imaging.

Science-team members for NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are soliciting 
help from the public to analyze exotic features near the south pole of 
Mars.

By categorizing features visible in images from the orbiter's Context 
Camera (CTX), volunteers are using their own computers to help the team 
identify specific areas for even more detailed examination with the orbiter's 
High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera. HiRISE can 
reveal more detail than any other camera ever put into orbit around Mars.

Information about how to participate is at the "Planet Four: Terrains" 
website, at:

http://terrains.planetfour.org

Planet Four: Terrains is on a new platform released by the Zooniverse, 
an organization that currently hosts 30 projects that enlist people worldwide 
to contribute to discoveries in fields ranging from astronomy to zoology. 
The new platform is designed to make it easier than ever for a researcher 
needing help with data analysis to set up a task to involve volunteers.

Some of Mars resembles deserts on Earth, but Martian polar regions display 
some quite unearthly processes and features. These are related to seasonal 
freezing and thawing of carbon dioxide ice, which does not exist naturally 
on Earth, but is manufactured and well-known as "dry ice." Every winter 
the polar regions of Mars are covered with a seasonal polar cap of carbon-dioxide 
ice.

"In the spring the dry ice turns to gas and carves unusual features in 
the Mars surface, resulting in exotic terrains described informally as 
'spiders,' 'Swiss cheese' and 'channel networks,'" said HiRISE Deputy 
Principal Investigator Candice Hansen, of the Planetary Science Institute, 
Tucson, Arizona.

On the Planet Four: Terrains website, volunteers review images from the 
south polar region of Mars and identify particular types of terrains. 
Each image from CTX covers a swath of ground about 16 miles (30 kilometers) 
wide, at a resolution of about 20 feet (6 meters) per pixel. The results 
from the citizen scientist input through Planet Four: Terrains will be 
used to target HiRISE for detailed seasonal studies beginning in mid-2016. 
Each HiRISE image covers a swath about 3.2 miles (five kilometers) wide, 
at a spatial scale of about 20 inches (half a meter) per pixel.

This new website is an outgrowth of the Planet Four initiative through 
which more than 120,000 citizen scientists have analyzed HiRISE image 
cutouts to measure fans that appear in the spring on the seasonal ice 
cap. The Planet Four website is at:

http://www.planetfour.org

More information about Zooniverse is available at:

http://www.zooniverse.org

With CTX, HiRISE and four other instruments, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter 
has been investigating Mars since 2006. The mission launched on Aug. 12, 
2005, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, built and operates CTX. The University 
of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace 
& Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colorado. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 
a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages 
the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project NASA's Science Mission Directorate, 
Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the orbiter and 
collaborates with JPL to operate it. For additional information about 
the project, visit:

http://mars.nasa.gov/mro


Media Contact

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673/Guy Webster 818-354-6278 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 
Pasadena, Calif. whitney.clavin at jpl.nasa.gov/guy.webster at jpl.nasa.gov 
Alan Fischer 520-382-0411 
Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Ariz.
fischer at psi.edu 

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown at nasa.gov 

2015-243