Elementary School Kids Explore the Moon At Close Range

sighted writes "The twin robotic spacecraft that make up the new GRAIL mission to map the moon's gravity include small cameras in addition to their primary scientific instruments. The first images from those cameras, as selected by school kids, were downlinked to Earth on March 20. 'MoonKAM is based on the premise that if your average picture is worth a thousand words, then a picture from lunar orbit may be worth a classroom full of engineering and science degrees,' said Maria Zuber, GRAIL mission principal investigator."

Darn

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the summary title, I was hoping that we'd actually sent some kids into lunar orbit... as an elementary school teacher, I know a few I wouldn't mind sending.

A thousand words

[ringman8567]

Every time I see a picture is worth a thousand words I ask myself which takes up more disc space?

How they gettin' back?

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on.

Everyone knows a kid or ten they'd like to put into lunar orbit.

Re:A thousand words

[Nationless]

A .txt document with 1000 random words gave me a 5.17 KB file. This value is an estimate since not all words are equal in the eyes of storage.

For comparison here is a 5.17 KB image: http://www.dreslough.com/main/bandw/cutedrg3.gif [dreslough.com].

I've always been a fan of my personal variant of the saying; "A picture is worth a thousand words, but a word can inspire a thousand pictures."