David Shiga, reporter
Calling all lunarphiles. You can help advance understanding of our neighbour satellite at a new website called Moon Zoo.
The site builds on the success of Galaxy Zoo, which harnesses the collective brainpower of thousands of volunteers to classify galaxies according to their shapes and has led to various discoveries.
The same people behind that project have created the Moon Zoo site, says Scientific American. Visit the site and you can help unlock the mysteries of the solar system by counting craters in images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
(Image: NASA)
This will help scientists unravel the history of asteroid and comet impacts on the moon and calculate the ages of different surfaces there. The moon preserves a better record of ancient impacts than Earth does, since craters quickly erode and disappear on our planet.
Moon Zoo could help lunar researchers understand the origins of a period of intense bombardment early in the solar system's history, prior to about 3.8 billion years ago.
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