(Guest blog post from Theresa Summer of theAstronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP), Educators’ Zone Demo & Design Specialist for CosmoQuest)

Expedition 49 crew members capture a nighttime view of the Strait of Gibraltar with a Russian Soyuz spacecraft (left) and Progress spacecraft (right) in the foreground. Credit: NASA

CosmoQuest and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific are developing a game to see what non-scientists can discover about images. To prepare for an upcoming new suite of citizen science programs, we are creating a game where people can match images from the astronauts in space to locations on Earth.

Expedition 40 Flight Engineer Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency posted this photograph of windswept valleys in Northern Africa, taken from the International Space Station, to social media on July 6, 2014. Credit: Alexander Gerst/ESA/NASA

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and other spacecraft regularly photograph the Earth from their unique point of view above the surface of the earth. These photographs help to record how the planet is changing over time, from human-caused changes like urban growth and reservoir construction, to natural dynamic events such as hurricanes, floods and volcanic eruptions. There is a tremendous amount of data in those pictures that can help us with problems like global warming, pollution, deforestation and just give us lots of cool important information.

Our prototype matching game. Credit: Theresa Summer

On the evening of Thursday, the 29th of September, from 6-8:30 pm, we had a game testing at the ASP headquarters in San Francisco. A group of 16 adults, ranging in ages from 20’s to 50’s, met to explore this new game prototype. The game as it stands is a pair matching game, that can either be a competitive/solo memory game or a cooperative team game.

We received lots of great feedback from our group of testers, who were excited and engaged. Important input was that the images were gorgeous to behold, and that a key with information about the pictures and locations would be useful. A fun time was had by all, including ASP staff.

Stay tuned in here at CosmoQuest for more information about the development and release of this useful game!