Number 271 - December 2005

Fly me to the moon - on a PC
The New York Times (Tacoma News Tribune 11/22/05)
Imagine soaring over the surface of the moon, dipping down into a crater and seeing rock slides on its slopes and. boulders piled up at the bottom.    You don't have to wait for a spaceship or even the night sky to get such a close-up view of the moon. You can visit the. moon right now with a personal computer and a broadband Internet connection, courtesy of a free public-access program developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Ames Research Center in California.    The moon views--detailed and three-dimensional--are an extension of NASA's "World Wind" computer program that has allowed computer users to tap into databases of satellite information on Earth.    Ten terabytes of satellite images, U .S. Geological Survey topographic and aerial photography data, and radar mapping information from a space shuttle mission allow viewers to see almost any place on Earth from their computers.    "World Wind lets users explore their world at will," said Patrick Hogan, manager of the project at Ames. Using the system's "Blue Planet" data set, viewers can see the entire Earth down to a resolution of 50 feet and the entire United States to a resolution of about 3 feet. Data for about 30 urban areas lets users see objects 1 foot wide.	Now programmers have expanded this view to the moon by incorporating 1.8 million pictures and other data about its surface acquired by the Clementine spacecraft, which orbited the moon in the mid-'90s.    "We have just digested the best of the Clementine images so we can now deliver the moon at 66-feet resolution," Hogan said. "This is a first." After downloading the World Wind program, users of computers running Microsoft's Windows operating system can tap into the lunar data set.    From a vantage point in space, viewers can see the moon and virtually control its movements. They can zoom in and slowly soar over the surface, dipping into craters and valleys.    Hogan said programmers were working on a version of the software that should work with Apple and Linux operating Systems. He expects it to be available next year.    Users must have a high-speed, broadband Internet connection and a computer running Windows 2000 or XP. World Wind can be downloaded at http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov.    World_Wind_1.3.3.1_Full.exe(53MB)
Number 271 - December 2005