We are having a broad, open request right now for people, new and established, to come visit the MoonMappers section of our site and help us to find craters. Why? We’re gearing up to present at the NASA Lunar Science Forums conference to be held at NASA Ames research center in California. The conference starts in three weeks, though!

In order to present the best science possible, we need to have as many craters identified as possible. Right now, we’re focused again on the Apollo 15 landing site. What we hope to present is:

• Since the landing sites have been imaged so much, we have them at lots of different sun angles and we want to figure out what the best angle is for identifying features like craters and bright and dark surfaces (these probably won’t be the same answer). This is something that has ONLY been able to be looked at since the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter for any planetary surface (other than Earth).
• Small crater counts will help us get a better handle on age-dating the moon with craters since we have rocks from all the Apollo sites and know how old they are. This kind of re-calibration has not been done since the very early 1980s.

Help us to accomplish these tasks! We’re not above a little bribery, so we’re giving out free swag to those who help!

Meanwhile, you can also take a look at a literal perspective shot of the Apollo 15 area, where the spacecraft turned its cameras over and imaged the region as though it were looking out an airplane window.