Four Years of Planet Four

Image Credit: catbeurnier– Flickr – original photo

January 8th, marked the 4th anniversary (well at least in Earth years!) of the launch of  the one and only original Planet Four. We wanted to thank you for being on this journey with us for the past four Earth years. Our first science paper seems to always be delayed, but I and the rest of the science team are dedicated to getting this paper out the door. The science team is virtually meeting on Wednesday to discuss what I hope is the freezing of the development of the classification clustering algorithm. That’s the hurdle in our way, and over the past Earth year Michael has made great strides dealing with the major issues we needed to tackle to get the science from your clicks. Thank you for your time and effort on the site. We still need you, and new data from Manhattan Season 5 is now live on the site. So go check it out and classify some fans and blotches at http://www.planetfour.org.

Planet Four has been able to show that a citizen science approach beyond crater identification with Mars orbital imagery works. The science team was invited this past fall to showcase Planet Four at a workshop focused on citizen participation in Mars exploration hosted by NASA Headquarters. Planet Four’s successes, has spawned other Mars Zooniverse citizen science projects: Planet Four: Terrains (which has already produced results with Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter pointing HiRISE and new locations on the Martian South Pole) and a  birthday gift if you like that is coming tomorrow! Stay tuned to this space for more tomorrow! We can’t wait to share this new endeavor with you all.

Thank you for the past four years and onward to Year 5!