Forget Galaxy Zoo and SETI@Home – using Google Earth you can now choose potential sites on Mars for a space-based camera to snap and send directly to you.

The latest upgrade to Google Earth 5.0 includes a collaboration with the scientists that run the THEMIS (Thermal Emission Imaging System) infrared camera on NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter.

They have developed software that shows where THEMIS will be flying over in the coming week or so, and using Google Earth you can pick out a site that you would particularly like to see photographed. If your choice matches with the mission scientists’ choice, they send you an email and a link to the data as soon as it’s zoomed back to Earth.

To do this you need Google Earth 5.0 and a file that is updated each week giving the spacecraft’s Mars orbital groundtrack, which is available from Arizona State University.

“We wanted to give the general public a way to suggest places on Mars for THEMIS to photograph,” says Philip Christensen, THEMIS’ principal investigator.

So hop to it! And if anyone gets their own Mars image in their inbox anytime soon, do let us know. Here in the Nature News office we’re about to make our own suggestions and will keep you posted.

Image: Martian dust storm, NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS