NASA has a problem, and it wants you to help. Since the ’50s, it’s amassed 1.8 million images of Earth from space — and it needs your assistance in working out exactly what they’re of.
As part of The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth, NASA is releasing the huge library of images — 1.3 million of which have been captured from aboard the International Space Station. Now, it’s asking the public to”help save energy, contribute to better human health and safety and improve our understanding of atmospheric chemistry.” To do that, it’s created a crowdsourcing project to help identify the locations depicted in the images. While most of the images are clear, many are partially obscured or taken at night, making it very difficult for computational systems to work out what the image are actually of.
That’s where you come in. In a collaboration with The Complutense University of Madrid, NASA wants you to catalogue some images. You can help with ‘dark skies’, ‘night cities’ or ‘lost at night’ projects — each featuring images harder to decode than the last. You can get involved right here. [NASA via CNN]