Armchair NASA fans, as well as science enthusiasts, will appreciate NASA’s latest mobile app –the Visualization Explorer App –which takes the stunning and beautiful Earth science visualizations captured from NASA’s fleet of research spacecraft and puts them directly into peoples’ hands.

“NASA satellites beam data from space; now the agency is beaming it straight to your iPad,” said media specialists at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., in releasing the new iPad app yesterday. The application is free to the public and available from the App Store via iTunes.

Cutting-edge visualization has long been a staple of NASA Earth science and in particular the Scientific Visualization Studio (SVS) at Goddard Space Flight Center.

The new app will feature high-resolution movies and still photography and short stories to put the visualizations into context. Most of the movies are simply visualizations of real satellite data. Other features will include interviews with scientists or imagery from supercomputer modeling efforts.

The app includes social networking interfaces, including links to Facebook and Twitter, for easy sharing of stories.

According to NASA’s website, the Goddard team designed the application essentially as a mobile multimedia magazine.

“Its one-of-a-kind content is geared to the general public, students, educators — anyone interested in the natural world,” said Michael Starobin, a senior producer at Goddard Space Flight Center who spearheaded the app’s editorial direction. The editorial team supporting the app plans to develop two new science features per week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

“The app will explore stories of climate change, Earth’s dynamic systems, plant life on land and in the oceans — all of the small and large stories captured in data by NASA satellites and then visualized.”

“Science should be accessible to everyone, and visualization reveals the meaning and value of the often intangible, but essential, data delivered by NASA’s research efforts,” Starobin said.

“Data visualization makes information immediately visual and understandable when it otherwise might go unnoticed, and the app makes it easy to explore in an engaging, easy-to-consume, thoroughly modern style.”

Visualization Explorer is one of a number of mobile products that the space agency has introduced as part of NASA’s mobile strategy, connecting the public with some of NASA’s advanced space-based research by way of easy-to-use mobile applications.

According to NASA’s website, the Goddard team designed the application essentially as a mobile multimedia magazine.

“Its one-of-a-kind content is geared to the general public, students, educators — anyone interested in the natural world,” said Michael Starobin, a senior producer at Goddard Space Flight Center who spearheaded the app’s editorial direction. The editorial team supporting the app plans to develop two new science features per week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

“The app will explore stories of climate change, Earth’s dynamic systems, plant life on land and in the oceans — all of the small and large stories captured in data by NASA satellites and then visualized.”

“Science should be accessible to everyone, and visualization reveals the meaning and value of the often intangible, but essential, data delivered by NASA’s research efforts,” Starobin said.

“Data visualization makes information immediately visual and understandable when it otherwise might go unnoticed, and the app makes it easy to explore in an engaging, easy-to-consume, thoroughly modern style.”

Visualization Explorer is one of a number of mobile products that the space agency has introduced as part of NASA’s mobile strategy, connecting the public with some of NASA’s advanced space-based research by way of easy-to-use mobile applications. More mobile products like the NASA Visualization Explorer App can be found on the USA.gov Apps Gallery site.