Be a Martian, be a winner

People will go the distance in the spirit of competition -- including, it seems, the vast distance to the Red Planet.

NASA is awarding people points and badges if they make a (virtual) trip to Mars and provide the agency with data about what they see.

The "Be a Martian" program is a collaboration between NASA and Microsoft to take advantage of "crowdsourcing." Players are invited to use their computers to sort through the hundreds of thousands of photos of Mars that rovers and orbiters have taken since the 1960s. They can win credit by counting craters or examining and organizing images into a more complete map of the planet.

NASA hopes to get help from citizen scientists and, who knows, may inspire some future planetary scientists.

The Web site, which went live this week, is http://BeAMartian.jpl.nasa.gov.

A player won't end up with a Martian rock in the trophy case. But a NASA badge for collecting helpful information during a virtual tour of Mars?

That's a victory in itself.