NASA Visualization Explorer, v.1.5 (for iPad)

Version 1.5 of NASA Visualization Explorer (for iPad) improves on a useful science app that I reviewed in version 1.0.3. The latest version adds larger images, pinch and zoom-ability, marking of favorites, playlists of stories, and the ability to save stories for offline reading. The ability to save stories to your iPad is particularly significant. Although a fast Internet connection is still helpful in downloading stories?most of which contain one or more videos?stories saved on your iPad for later viewing will load instantly, whether you're online or not.

NASA isn?t only about space; it's had a fleet of Earth-monitoring satellites for more than 40 years. NASA Visualization Explorer (for iPad) combines images, videos, and simulations from both the cosmos and our own planet in a series of informative and visually stunning stories, each highlighting a different finding or aspect of NASA?s work.

Start Your Exploration

When you open the NASA Visualization Explorer (aka NASAViz) app, clicking on a menu icon at the screen?s lower left corner brings up the full menu of available stories, identified by title, date, and an associated image. You can also access lists of stories, sorted by topic: Earth; Planets and Moons; Sun; and Universe, as well as unread and saved stories and custom story lists.

Clicking on any of the stories brings up an image (or video) and caption, while along the bottom are thumbnails with more images and/or videos related to the caption. You can shrink the caption to show a full-screen image, or access the next story (or previous one), by clicking a right or left arrow. Holding your finger to an image lets you save it to a Photo Album on your iPad, print it, copy it, or email it, or share it to Facebook or Twitter. Stretching an image brings up a full-screen version.

At the screen?s lower right corner are four icons. A down arrow lets you save a story with all related images and video for offline viewing. A star arrow lets you mark stories as your personal Favorites. A plus icon lets you create custom lists of stories.

The last icon, at the lower right corner of the screen, is a right arrow. It lets you copy a story, open it in Safari on the NASAViz Web site (which includes the content of all the stories); share the story?s URL to Facebook or Twitter, e-mail or text it.

A gear icon in the screen?s upper left corner takes you to the Control Panel, which gives you information about the app and lets you change some basic settings. The About tab discusses the app?s creation by the Goddard Space Flight Center, while Instructions gives you a basic primer for using the app, and there?s a button for sending feedback to the app?s development team.

Stellar Content

There are plenty of timely stories, too, such as the one about the survival and amazing performance of sungrazing Comet Lovejoy, including videos of its reappearance after an exceedingly close encounter with our star. There's even a later video of the comet, now sporting a long tail, taken from the International Space Station. Another story that gained some play in the press was the discovery by NASA?s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope of antimatter bursts released by thunderstorms. It, too, is featured in NASA Visualization Explorer. Visions of Venus contains a superb video of our sister world?s transit across the face of the Sun, captured in multiple wavelengths by the Solar Dynamics Observatory.

I found the first entry, titled Artificial World Captures Reality particularly interesting, as it describes NASA?s use of computer models that it uses in both short-term weather models and long-term climate models. NASA satellites in earth orbit relay immense amounts of data back to Earth each day, and scientists create a numerical model based on the data. As new data comes in, they tweak the model in an attempt to get a better approximation of reality. NASA?s Goddard Space Flight Center uses a supercomputer-based climate model called GEOS-5, which?at least in the short term?is able to predict shifts in weather patterns.

Many of the stories detail changes observed over time by satellites, ranging from local phenomena such as Las Vegas?s shrinking water table to large-scale changes such as the melting of ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland and rising mean global temperatures. The app provides both evidence supportive of global warming and NASA?s reasoning and conclusions.

Regular Updates

The app?s content is regularly updated. In 2012, new entries have consistently been added to NASA Visualization Explorer at the rate of 8 or 9 a month. A significant majority are Earth science stories. Of the 87 stories available as mid-June, 67 were indexed under Earth, 15 under Sun, 8 under Planets and Moons, and 5 under Universe.

This free app gives viewers a look at what NASA?s satellites are studying?in space and especially on our own world. Version 1.5 offers improvements over version 1.0, the most significant one being the ability to save stories for offline viewing. NASA's impressive app could still could benefit from links to additional material on the topics covered. Overall, NASA Visualization Explorer provides dazzling visuals and detailed explanatory text of some timely and compelling science stories, and it's definitely worth a download.

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