Get Your Ass To Mars

November 19, 2009 1:50 AM

NASA invites you to Be A Martian

Faced with the mountain of data gathered by Mars missions over the last 30 years, NASA has decided to go down the crowdsourcing route in their attempt to construct a complete map of the planet's surface, presenting it as an online game in which players earn points for counting craters and aligning map pieces.

(requires Silverlight)

posted by him (19 comments total)

Ooh, shiny!
posted by Xany at 2:25 AM on November 19, 2009

Arrgh my citizenship has been crowdsourced to China
posted by XMLicious at 2:31 AM on November 19, 2009

So we have a post referencing "2010" (1984), followed by one referencing "Total Recall" (1990). For the next post, we need something related to a sci-fi movie from 1996... oh crap, "Independence Day"... RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:04 AM on November 19, 2009

t?;dr
posted by mhjb at 3:07 AM on November 19, 2009

I ♥ earth. Silverlight is for bitches.
posted by Paris Hilton at 3:51 AM on November 19, 2009

As far as molecular light is concerned, Silverlight is a pale imitation Low pressure sodium, which in turn likewise, Mercury Vapor, which is just a third rate imitation of lime light, IMO.
posted by Paris Hilton at 3:53 AM on November 19, 2009 [1 favorite]

When do we get to kill the reporters in Grover's Mill?
posted by leotrotsky at 5:00 AM on November 19, 2009

They need an iPhone version of this. I would definitely do this while taking a du^H^H^H spending some quality alone time.
posted by beowulf573 at 5:58 AM on November 19, 2009

I pretend to be a martian by regarding this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drawing my plans against it.
posted by Astro Zombie at 6:29 AM on November 19, 2009 [1 favorite]

t?;dr

You cannot grok this link, waterbrother?
posted by greekphilosophy at 7:27 AM on November 19, 2009 [4 favorites]

I tried to do some maping but it is basically a large (640x480) image, trying to line up some small (60x60) images, which are in a different colorspace with different contrast, making it impossible. I worry that they're not going to get much good data out of this.

http://passionbear.com/charlesv/talk/marsmap2.png
posted by CharlesV42 at 7:35 AM on November 19, 2009

Not to mention once I did, I got this error:

"[HttpWebRequest_WebException_RemoteServer]
Arguments:NotFound
Debugging resource strings are unavailable. Often the key and arguments provide sufficient information to diagnose the problem. See http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=106663&Version=3.0.40818.0&File=System.Windows.dll&Key=HttpWebRequest_WebException_RemoteServer
"

Thanks, silverlight, NASA, MS, whoever.
posted by CharlesV42 at 7:38 AM on November 19, 2009

I tried to do some maping but it is basically a large (640x480) image, trying to line up some small (60x60) images, which are in a different colorspace with different contrast, making it impossible. I worry that they're not going to get much good data out of this.

That was my experience as well (after the hassle of installing silverlight). Seems like it's a case of interesting idea, shame about the execution.
posted by him at 7:41 AM on November 19, 2009

ever since i went to this site i can't even recall my name.
posted by the aloha at 7:45 AM on November 19, 2009

Yeah I can't really understand the mapping at all, so I tried to count craters instead and got the same error message.

FIX IT!
posted by hermitosis at 7:45 AM on November 19, 2009

So is Silverlight the girl with three boobs or the guy with the baby coming out of his chest?
posted by fuq at 8:16 AM on November 19, 2009

Yup, is broken for me too (after counting a lot of craters). Agree too about the mapping - hard, if not impossible, to line it up correctly. Bookmarked but, but this needs more work.
posted by anigbrowl at 10:43 AM on November 19, 2009

You cannot grok this link, waterbrother?
posted by greekphilosophy

Stand back. I'm about to do science.
posted by lazaruslong at 12:46 PM on November 19, 2009 [1 favorite]

If anyone's still reading this thread, the site requires Silverlight 3.0 to run the interactive stuff, like crater-matching. Older Macs with PowerPC chips can only run Silverlight 1.0, according to Microsoft Silverlight tech support (I emailed them and received a very prompt helpful reply, to their credit).

Sigh... guess I'm an Earthling until I shell out for a new laptop.
posted by Quietgal at 11:58 AM on November 21, 2009