Dr. Robinson remembers thinking about Murphy’s Law and joking, “I knew exactly where it was going.”
Since the collapse was predicted a month ahead of schedule, the mission team was able to fill most of the gaps.
Then the search begins.
Usually, computer programs do the comparison, but this works best if the before and after photos are taken at the same time. For this search, multiple images were taken at different times, and the color difference messed up the algorithm.
With all the false positives, Dr. Robinson said, “We just sat down and some people manually went through millions of pixels.”
Alexander Sonek, a senior in the Arizona Department of Geosciences, contributed to the effort. He estimates that he spent about 50 hours over several weeks doing the difficult task.
Mr Sonke graduated in May. I’m married. Go on honeymoon. A week and a half ago was his first day on the job – he was about to start his postgraduate studies with Dr. Robinson as his advisor – and he continued his search for a place of influence.
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