In 2003, NASA launched a pair of twin
rovers to Mars. Spirit and Opportunity landed on opposite sides of the Red
Planet in early 2004. But Spirit became stuck in deep sand in 2010 while
Opportunity continued functioning until 2018. Those two were followed by
Curiosity, still going strong on the Martian surface. But Curiosity’s wheels
became worn down early in its mission due to traveling over a field of tough,
sharp rocks.
NASA's Curiosity Rover on Mars, credit NASA
Now, NASA is asking for your help
in training Curiosity to recognize and avoid terrain that might cause a
problem. NASA partnered with the citizen science site Zooniverse (www.zooniverse.org).
Zooniverse contains dozens of projects that citizen scientists, you, can help
with. I have written about Zooniverse in several past columns, but the site is
constantly adding new projects at the request of scientists around the world.
There are many subjects that researchers need help in ranging from Arts to Language,
History, Medicine, and Physics, just to name a few. Once you register on the
site, you can join in any of the projects. Some Zooniverse volunteers have made
significant discoveries and are even named as collaborators on the scientific
papers produced with their help.
The project that helps Curiosity drive safely
is called AI4Mars. Not only will it help Curiosity, it will also teach the next
Mars rover, Perseverance, expected to launch in July. For now, Curiosity needs
your help as its wheels are already compromised, and NASA doesn’t want it to
meet the same fate as Spirit.
Mars Perseverance Rover set for launch in late July 2020, credit NASA
The Zooniverse website describes
the AI4Mars project goal: “By participating in this project, you will help
improve the rovers’ ability to identify different, sometimes dangerous, terrain
- an essential skill for autonomous exploration!
“Terrain is important to get around on Mars.
Spirit got stuck in a sandpit and ended its mission after 7 years of exploring
Mars. Opportunity and Curiosity also have experienced getting stuck in sand,
although they were able to continue on their missions. Don’t you think it would
be nice if the Mars rover could identify dangerous terrain by herself? That is
what a team at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory is working on using Machine
learning – essentially the same technology used by self-driving cars on Earth.
To do so, the rover needs training data to learn from.
“We're counting on citizen
scientists' help in labeling a set of images captured by Mars rovers so that we
collectively create the Solar System's first public benchmark for Martian
terrain classification.”
AI4Mars is only one of 96 projects
on the Zooniverse site where scientists in all disciplines ask for the help of
citizen scientists like yourself. If you have always liked science but thought
you just weren’t cut out for it, this is where you can help real scientists do
real, important science.
Each
month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for the Oklahoman newspaper.
On the following day, I post that same column to my blog page.
This is reprinted by
permission from the Oklahoman and www.newsok.com.
