Comments on: Map and measure a million Moon craters!

By: Moon Express

Moon Express — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 15:30:51 +0000

Moon Express response to ’13. Moffett Dude’ & ’14. Mike Moffett’ comments:

To set the record straight with some facts, there haven’t been any lay-offs at Moon Express, ever, and we have never told our staff we are becoming a software company. We continue to hire engineers and grow our staff and operations toward our short term goal of lunar robotic exploration and long term goals of lunar mining and resource development.

The ME Team.

By: Jeff Adkins

Jeff Adkins — Sat, 05 May 2012 15:09:01 +0000

I’ve checked into a few of these citizen science sites like MoonZoo and GalaxyZoo. I think they would get a lot more participation if these each featured: 1) an easily printable black-on-white logbook so students could provide evidence of participation to teachers 2) suggestions about projects or lab-like activities students could do either as classroom assignments or as projects in a science fair. Observe 300 craters and plot this vs. that and look for… etc. From an educator’s perspective this holds limited possibilities because I have to use it to advance my specific curricular goals…which I can accomplish in a 5 minute demo. The repetition and attention these projects require for the scientists is not meeting the needs of teachers and students unless there’s a more immediate, tangible product to generate. But maybe it’s just my lack of creativity.

By: Mike Moffett

Mike Moffett — Fri, 04 May 2012 20:21:30 +0000

Looks like everyone’s opinions are shifting. Moon Express was making pro-mining noises last week. But then earlier this week they started to lay off some of their engineers and told the remaining employees that this hardware company is now a software company and that their new product is something that names moon craters.

By: Moffett Dude

Moffett Dude — Fri, 04 May 2012 20:12:37 +0000

MoonMappers and MoonZoo will soon have some competition. Bob Richards told his Moon Express staff the other day that the company is shifting its focus to software and that their new product will be a service where people can name craters on the moon.

By: roymeo

roymeo — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:52:59 +0000

Phil didn’t even give us his username to count his referrals. It doesn’t appear to be “BadAstronomer”.

By: Zenzan

Zenzan — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 23:53:34 +0000

Puts me in mind of aBeetle’s song Phil:

I read the news today, oh boy
Four thousand holes in Blackburn Lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Now I know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall
Nice post

By: mikel

mikel — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 22:55:57 +0000

Anybody else get an Apollo landing site?

By: Stuart R

Stuart R — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 21:29:09 +0000

Regarding MoonMappers versus Moon Zoo, these are completely separate projects with different science teams and goals. Yes, at a very basic level, they do the same thing – identify craters on the Moon – but that’s where the similarities stop. Besides craters, Moon Zoo is looking at constraining the thickness of the lunar regolith (the “soil”), map the distribution of boulders across the surface, and identify and catalog unusual geologic features.

Our starting projects for Moon Mappers are very different. Among other things, we’re looking initially at how we identify craters so that we can plan better in the future. For example, the Man vs. Machine interface (what Phil took a screenshot of) is not just identifying craters for our science questions that require the building of a crater catalog, but we’re studying how to fine-tune the crater detection algorithm we’re using and whether it’s faster to use this kind of interface or do everything on your own. Science-wise, one thing we’re trying to answer early on is what sun angles are best for identifying craters, and if there are systematic differences we can model if we don’t have that ideal angle. Beyond that, another early project is looking at refining the crater densities at the Apollo landing sites to help constrain lunar chronology, and we’re also exploring the enigmatic cryptomare region within the South Pole-Aitken Basin.

We also presented our first results from MoonMappers last month at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, and you can check out the results and the poster we presented here: [link didn't go ...] (or, if the link doesn’t go through, navigate over to cosmoquest.org, go to the blog, and look for the post on March 20 entitled, “First MoonMappers Science Poster Being Presented Tonight”).

By: zackm

zackm — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:44:27 +0000

arabwhipmonk:

LRO Altimetry data is already available. It’s just extremely sparse compared to these LRO-NAC images shown in Moon Mapper. A single LRO-NAC observation normally has about 5 LOLA tracks through it. However the above screenshot is just a crop from LRO-NAC, and probably no LOLA measurements exist for that crop. Thus, crater counting still seems to be the realm of 2D image processing.

By: Margrit McIntosh

Margrit McIntosh — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:35:47 +0000

Wait – this sounds exactly like MoonZoo – ? Also using LRO images? Makes no sense.