The Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter are currently exploring the Jezero crater on Mars, and members of the public are helping to map unusual ridge features. Thousands of citizen scientists helped to map out ridge networks that can give clues to how water flowed on Mars billions of years ago as part of a recently published paper.
The public was invited to help classify data from a number of Mars instruments by researchers from Arizona State University and NASA. A total of 953 ridge networks were identified by citizen scientists through the Zooniverse platform.
One of the authors said that almost anyone with a computer and internet can help identify these patterns using images of Mars.
Around the time that Mars is thought to have had liquid water flowing on its surface, the ridge networks were most often found in terrain that was up to 4 billion years old. Similar ridges have been found to have clays, which is important as clays tend to form in the presence of water. Many of the ridges are now covered in dust, which makes it hard to analyze, but this suggests that they could have formed due to water flowing on or near the surface.
The researchers hope to eventually map the entire planet with the help of citizen scientists.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
