The Daily App: NASA Visualization Explorer For iPad

Last week, the space agency launched its NASA Visualization Explorer for iPAD, or “NASA Viz,” that provides a snappy and colorful gateway to images and research conducted by satellite into the Earth’s changing characteristics. Using imagery pulled together from space-based satellites pointed at our planet, NASA has begun to present results of its research via this new iPad app. For example, in one finding, NASA provided a study in “India’s Disappearing Water,” using data gleaned from its GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellites. The images, measuring “tiny shifts in the Earth’s gravitational field,” presented findings that demonstrated the loss of what it said was 88 million acre-feet of ground water beneath several, northern India states. The result was an incredibly demonstrative map.

While this stuff is interesting to science, geography and hydrology buffs, it also points out how the new iPad platform can be a powerful conduit for presenting highly complex data in a straightforward and easy-to-grasp method.