NASA isnt only about looking outward to space; theyve had a fleet of satellites look at Earth from space 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 NASAs work.

Exploring Explorer

When you open the app, clicking on a menu icon at the screens lower left corner brings up the full menu of available stories, identified by title, date, and an associated image. Clicking on any one of these 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 advance to the next story (or previous one) by clicking a right or left arrow.

A button on the lower right corner on the screen lets you share a story on Facebook or Twitter, e-mail it, or open it in Safari on the NASA Visualization Explorer Web site, which also includes the content of all the stories.

Clicking on a gear icon to the right of the menu icon takes you to information about the app. The About tab discusses the apps creation by the Goddard Space Flight Center, while Instructions gives you a basic primer for using the app, and theres a link for sending feedback to the apps development team.

Serious Internet Required

In using this app, youd benefit from a fast Internet connection, as some of the videos can take a long time to load. One can access some previously viewed content when not online, but for much of the material (and to download any new stories), your iPad needs to be connected to the Internet.

Climate, Comets, & Vegas

I found the first entry, titled Artificial World Captures Reality particularly interesting, as it describes NASAs 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. NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center uses a supercomputer-based climate model called GEOS-5, whichat least in the short termis able to predict shifts in weather patterns.

Many of the stories are timely, like one about the survival and amazing performance of sun-grazing Comet Lovejoy, including videos of its reappearance after an exceedingly close encounter with our star, and 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 NASAs Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope of antimatter bursts released by thunderstorms. It, too, is featured in NASA Visualization Explorer.

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NASA Visualization Explorer (for iPad)