NASA accepts Moon-mapping citizen science proposal

Category: Cover Story

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NASA announced that it has selected a proposal led by Planetary Science Institute Research Scientist Kirby Runyon to train hundreds of citizen scientists to map the Moon in high resolution. PSI Senior Scientist Pamela Gay is a co-investigator.

Dubbed “A Citizen Scientist Approach to High Resolution Geologic Mapping of Intracrater Impact Melt Deposits as an input to Numerical Models,” the project will save scientists time and provide data to help them better understand how rock that melts in the heat of meteoroid impact flows across the Moon’s surface.

“The availability of high-resolution lunar images and other data allows modern researchers to explore the details of impact craters, crater melt flows, and occurrences of boulders much as terrestrial field geologists do on Earth. The only real limitation on discovery (ignoring our desire to actually walk or rove in search of samples) is time,” according to the proposal.

For example, it can take months for a scientist to map the thousands of square miles that make up the Moon’s Tycho Crater. The project aims to recruit and train citizen scientists to trace the outlines and other features of cooled flows of impact melt, which is similar to lava, at very fine spatial scales (about 1:10,000, or about 2 meters per pixel) using basic drawing tools on a web interface. For this study, Runyon and Gay will also professionally map the same areas as the citizen scientists as a benchmark against which to evaluate the efficacy of using citizen scientists.

“We anticipate significant volunteer training will be needed and that this project is likely to only attract volunteers willing to linger on images for longer periods of time,” according to the proposal.

The team will leverage the audience of CosmoQuest, a podcast hosted by Gay along with Fraser Cain. This audience has already been called on to help map the surface of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu for another citizen science project.

This citizen science lunar mapping project could also inform modeling efforts to understand the physics of how melted lunar rock flows after it’s created by an impact. The work could also potentially be used to train machine-learning algorithms to accelerate future mapping efforts.