NASA and JPL team up for kids - BE A MARTIAN and REALLY help map Mars

NASA is outsourcing laborious Martian cartography to Earth children with a website that entices users to make a game out of sorting through the space agency's hundreds of thousands images of the Red Planet.

In collaboration with Microsoft, NASA has created the "Be a Martian" website, where helping to improve Mars map data earns participants "points" and "badges" as well as a heady sense of aiding humanity's exploration of distant worlds without having to wipe the Funions dust off your fingers.

The website features two games that use crowdsourcing as a tool to help scientists better understand the Red Planet.

One game tasks players with lining up three images of the Martian surface taken by the 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter against a larger background image from the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter (operational from 1996-2006) that measures elevation. Using the background as a guide, users nudge the smaller images into place until the surface features line up precisely. NASA said the process game will help scientists create more accurate 3D models of the planet. (This game can prove quite difficult when the images provided lack distinctive features).

SNIP................

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/18/nasa_microsoft_beamartian/

The NASA site is here and after looking at it I find it a great place for kids
and they really could help do real science dealing with cartography.

My 5th grade students years ago got their names put on a CD that went to Mars and it helped them get interested in Science..... My name is on that CD also .

NASA site
http://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov/