Kickstarter Project To Create Online Map Of Cities At Night Using Space Station Photos

A Kickstarter project is aiming to build a ‘Google Maps-style’ map of its own made up of nighttime shots of global cities, taken from the International Space Station.

Using the Cities At Night platform, volunteers can use the app to help to look through stunning pictures taken from space, geotagging them as they go along.

NASA has a database of nearly half a million photos of city views from space taken by astronauts from the ISS, so there’s plenty of material to work with.

The project is aiming to raise an initial £36,000 (50,000 Euros) which will go towards moving the map from its current temporary home on Google Maps Engine onto the maker’s own platform.

Eventually, the plan is to develop a tool that adds image to the map automatically, as they currently need to be added manually.

The app will also be improved so that users can win badges according to the number of image they have classified, or if they are the first person to find a city.

Pledges on the crowd-funding site start at £1.40 (2 Euros), going up to (£3560 (5,000 Euros) and the deadline is 10 October.