Want to point a Martian spy satellite? NASA has begun a campaign to allow everyday space buffs to scour the landscape of Mars for interesting spots that can then be submitted as targets for HiRise, the high-resolution camera on MRO that has dazzled viewers with photos that are not so much otherwordly but strangely Earth-like in their color and variety. The programme, called HiWish, went live today.

This doesn’t appear to be a one-off PR exercise, like the occasional contests to point the Hubble Space Telescope. According to the Arizona Daily Star, Alfred McEwen, PI for the camera, says this will turn HiRise into the “people’s camera”, though he does not say how much of HiRise’s time will be devoted to these submitted targets, or how junky suggestions will be filtered for useful ones. I hope they allow viewers to rank other people’s selections, like Amazon does for its reviews. I’d give you five stars for spotting a steaming methane vent. If this plays out with any degree of usefulness, it could be another example of a ‘citizen science’ project, where crowd-sourcing certain tasks actually aids and abets the science. My favorite examples are Stardust @Home and Galaxy Zoo, though the Audobon Society’s Christmas Bird Count is the oldest, at 110 years.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona