NASA'S "BE A MARTIAN" CITIZEN SCIENCE PROJECT

NASA’s Mars missions are generating an unprecedented amount of data to be analyzed—including hundreds of thousands of images of the surface of Mars. NASA’s new Be a Martian website (http://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov), developed in partnership with Microsoft, is built on the idea that Mars exploration is a civilization endeavor open to all. The site enables the public to participate as citizen scientists to improve Martian maps, take part in research tasks, and assist Mars science teams studying data about the Red Planet through a number of online crowdsourcing activities housed in the Be a Martian “Map Room.”

In the Map Room, participants can help align images for a new global map of Mars, assisting scientists in producing the highest-resolution map yet and enabling smoother zoom-in views and easier interpretation of Martian surface changes. Users also can mark the size and distribution of craters in orbital images of the surface, which may help scientists determine the relative ages of small regions on Mars. And participants will help provide scientists and engineers with a catalog of images from the Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, by “tagging” the contents of individual images. To encourage more public participation, the site also provides a virtual town hall forum where users can expand their knowledge by proposing Mars questions and voting on which are the most interesting to the community.

Visitors to the website may sign up to become a Martian “citizen” (to date, over 50,000 people worldwide have become citizens of Be a Martian’s “Crater City”) or may choose to explore the site on a “tourist visa.” Be a Martian participants who have signed up and become citizens are able to earn points for their citizen science contributions. Over time, the Be a Martian site will include additional educational resources and citizen science competitions for K-12 students as well as lifelong learners. In this presentation, we will discuss the development of the tools and data sets used in Be a Martian, including challenges and lessons learned, and will provide an update on the site and participation to-date as well as future plans for engaging the public in Mars exploration.