The huge amount of data from the NAC is both its best
feature and the greatest obstacle to using it as a resource
for seeking alien artifacts. Each NAC frame is 500 megapixels,
and takes between 30 min and an hour to analyze
in sufficient detail to be able to locate artifacts such as the
Surveyor landers. So far more than 340,000 NAC images
have been released to the public, and that number will
likely approach 1,000,000 by the time it has achieved 100
percent coverage. From these numbers, it is obvious that a
manual search by a small team is hopeless. It might be
possible to scan the entire dataset by ‘‘crowdsourcing’’ the
work to a few tens of thousands of people over the
Internet, and in fact this approach is being taken by the
website MoonZoo.org, which is trying to classify as many
features on the moon as possible by having people look at
a few NAC frames each, and record what they find. The
downside to this approach is that with so many people
involved, there will be differences in opinion on what is
and isn’t important. Without a lot of organization and
dedication, many images will get skipped and many
potentially interesting features overlooked. Nevertheless,
this project will doubtless result in some claims of alien
artifacts, and one or more of them might conceivably be
correct.