NASA is asking for your help . No , you do not get to go to space . You do , however , get to view hundreds of thousands of images taken from space . Via The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth , NASA is making available images ranging from the Mercury missions of the 1960s to photos recently snapped from the International Space Station . The hope , NASA says , is that the images `` could help save energy , contribute to better human health and safety and improve our understanding of atmospheric chemistry . But scientists need your help to make that happen . '' The catalog contains more than 1.8 million photos , about 1.3 million of them from the space station and roughly 30 % of them taken at night . Before 2003 , night images from the space station could be blurry , even with high-speed film and manual tracking , because the station moves at about 17,500 mph . In 2003 , enterprising astronaut Don Pettit used a drill and assorted parts he found on the station to cobble together a `` barn-door tracker , '' a lower-tech predecessor to the European Space Agency 's NightPod , which was installed at the space station nine years later . NightPod 's motorized tripod compensates for the space station 's speed , providing what NASA scientist William Stefanov says are the highest-resolution night images from orbit . Satellites collect data more regularly , but the photos tend to be lower resolution . `` Now the pictures are clear , but their location may not be , which limits their usefulness . That 's where citizen science comes in , '' the NASA news release says . The Complutense University of Madrid is spearheading efforts to catalog the photos and corral citizen input . It 's broken the images into three components requiring different levels of participation : . 1 . Dark skies . This is the easiest project , as it requires no scientific expertise . `` Anyone can help '' by sorting the images into the categories : cities , stars or other objects , said Alejandro Sanchez , doctoral student at Complutense . `` Without the help of citizens , it is almost impossible to use these images scientifically . Algorithms can not distinguish between stars , cities and other objects , such as the moon . Humans are much more efficient for complex image analysis , '' he said . 2 . Night cities . Looking at night images , citizen scientists can tap their knowledge of local geography to match photos with positions on maps . Residents of a city can more easily identify a city 's features than those who do n't live there , Sanchez said . The data will be used to generate light maps of cities . 3 . Lost at night . This is the trickiest , as it aims to identify cities in photos with 310-mile circumferences . `` We do n't know which direction the astronaut pointed the camera , only where the station was at the time the image was taken , '' Sanchez said . `` Some images are bright cities , but others are small towns . It is like a puzzle with 300,000 pieces . '' Hundreds of volunteers have stepped up so far , classifying almost 20,000 photos , but NASA says multiple individuals should review each image to ensure accuracy . The `` open atlas of nighttime images '' can be used to assess economic conditions , Sanchez said . One photo of the Korean Peninsula shows how North Korea is a barely lit swath of land between the heavily illuminated nations of South Korea and China . Sanchez also cited the examples of Madrid and Berlin . `` Madrid is the capital of Spain , a country facing a major economic crisis . It is much brighter in astronaut images than Berlin , the capital of Germany , the country with the healthiest economy in Europe . Perhaps that is an indication that Germany more efficiently manages its resources . The images can provide evidence and data to verify that . '' Other aims of the project include evaluating street lighting for safety purposes as well as to analyze light pollution and its effects on human health .
Until recently , night images taken from 17,500-mph space station could be blurry . Now they are clear and sharp as a razor blade. University in Madrid broke images down into three categories with different aims . Researcher : Madrid brighter than Berlin , despite economic disparity between cities .