World Wind

Taking the idea of 3d planetary viewing out of this world, Lunar World Wind represents the first step in applying 3d world viewing technologies to other planetary bodies. In support of NASA's Vision for Space Exploration, Lunar World Wind is integrating a host of lunar datasets to provide a scientifically accurate representation of the Moon, which NASA researchers and mission controllers will be able to utilize in future lunar missions.

The moon, digitally recreated using imagery from NASA's Clementine mission.

Lunar World Wind is an extension to the World Wind dataset that allows users to experience the Moon in full 3d. Using data taken from NASA's Clementine mission as well as topographical data of the moon, Lunar World Wind displays high-resolution lunar imagery in context.

Accessing Lunar World Wind is as easy as selecting the Moon dataset from within World Wind itself. Once selected, a virtual moon is displayed, providing the same interactive experience with Lunar data as with Earth data. Users are able to zoom in to various locations across the surface of the Moon, and toggle on and off different datasets via the Layer manager. Place names, grid lines and elevation maps all help users acclimate themselves to the Lunar surface.

Quantity, format and location. Three major issues that many organizations have to deal with when attempting to manage data, and NASA is no exception. In the case of Moon data, NASA has terabytes of information stored in a variety of formats at NASA centers and research institutions across the country.

While past attempts to leverage the internet to provide distributed, on demand access to NASA datasets have been moderately successful, there have been several drawbacks. First, anyone interested in accessing NASA's vast archives of lunar data, including NASA's own researchers, have had to visit numerous web sites which serve data in different formats using different viewing tools. Since these systems are all separate, the data can not be viewed concurrently or layered, leaving researchers to undertake the arduous process of attempting to see how data may correlate.

In addition, all of this data is stored in piecemeal format, providing access to only small segments of data at a time. Each 'tile' of data has to be viewed individually, meaning that it is out-of-context with the rest of the data in the dataset. This context-less view of datasets makes data mining and research activities challenging and extremely time consuming.

Lunar World Wind directly addresses all of these issue by providing a single application for accessing and viewing lunar data sets. Remote access capabilities allow Lunar World Wind to access lunar datasets across the internet while advanced layering techniques allows data to be downloaded and displayed on demand as users navigate the lunar environment. Zoom in and Lunar World Wind will remotely access and display more detailed, higher-resolution imagery. Zoom out to see a broader set of data and get the bigger picture.

The result is that terabytes of distributed moon data can be visualized in context and served efficiently to desktop computers anywhere on the internet.

Over the past 50 years of space exploration, NASA has spent billions of dollars in running and operating missions. What is left after the hardware eventually expires is the data collected by the scientific instruments and cameras that NASA sends into space. This data represents humankind's collective knowledge on the past, present and future of not only Earth, but of other planets, our solar system, the galaxy and the universe.

Lunar World Wind is breathing new life into the billions of dollars worth of data that NASA has collected over the years, bringing old and new datasets together, in context, for todays researchers and future generations of space explorers.