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nasa posts

Filed under: Odds and ends, iPhone, Apple History

Highest-resolution Earth photo looks familiar for a reason

Last month, Gizmodo posted an incredible image from NASA: The most accurate, highest-resolution photo of Earth taken to date. It's stunning, in all of its 2048 x 2048 pixel glory. In fact, there are two images: One showing the Americas and one showing Europe. Both make a great desktop image.

They're also oddly familiar, and now Gizmodo confirms what many suspected: It's the same Earth image that's welcomed new users to the iPhone since its launch in 2007.

NASA noted that the image has been public since 2002, and is the results of many months of work. "Using a collection of satellite-based observations," NASA shares on their Flickr page, "scientists and visualizers stitched together months of observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a seamless, true-color mosaic of every square kilometer (.386 square mile) of our planet."

The image recently started generating a lot of traffic on the web as Apple fanboys realized the connection. Now, the next time you see that image on your iPhone, say thank you to the hard-working NASA employees who put it together.

Filed under: Hardware, Odds and ends, iPhone

A new accessory for your iPhone: a NASA-developed chemical sensor

What's better than a handful of sensors for determining if some hostile enemy has set off chemical weapons in a city? How about hundreds of thousands or millions of sensors? If research being done by NASA Ames Research Center under the Cell-All program in the US Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate is taken into production, your next smartphone might contain chemical-sensing circuitry.

A recent article in OnOrbit described a proof of concept that was developed by Jing Li, a scientist at Ames, and a group of other researchers. In order to test out the tiny nanosensor-based chemical sensing circuitry, Li and his team created a device that plugs into the dock port of an iPhone.

To quote the original post,
The new device is able to detect and identify low concentrations of airborne ammonia, chlorine gas and methane. The device senses chemicals in the air using a "sample jet" and a multiple-channel silicon-based sensing chip, which consists of 16 nanosensors, and sends detection data to another phone or a computer via telephone communication network or Wi-Fi.
A newer version of the sensor has 64 nanosensors built-in and is less than 1 cm on a side. Isn't it cool that your iPhone is getting to be more like a Star Trek tricorder every day?

[via Gizmodo]

Filed under: Multimedia, Odds and ends, Blogging, Macbook Pro, MacBook

Space geeks love MacBook Pros

Like a lot of my fellow space geeks, I was watching the live feed from Spaceflight Now this morning for the launch of the Ares 1-X test vehicle. Unfortunately, the launch was scrubbed, but I was happy to see that the three guys doing the coverage this morning were all using MacBook Pros.

The MacBook Pros were all being used to do blogging and tweeting during the launch coverage, as well as to receive updates from NASA.

The coverage was being provided by former CNN talking head and well-known aviation enthusiast Miles O'Brien (center), veteran TV reporter David Waters (at left), and Astronaut Leroy Chiao (at right). While the weather didn't cooperate for the launch this morning, that gives TUAW readers another chance tomorrow morning to watch and listen to the launch, and to admire all that gleaming aluminum in the morning sun -- that's the MacBook Pros, not the Ares 1-X.

Filed under: iPhone, iPod touch, App Review

Failure is not an option: the official NASA iPhone app is here

There are a lot of space geeks out there. You know the type; they wake up in the early hours of the morning to watch launch coverage or live feeds from the International Space Station, they follow NASA astronauts on Twitter, and they're married to people in the space biz. Oh, wait -- that's me!

Yeah, I'm a bona-fide space geek and proud of it, so I was thrilled to hear that the official NASA iPhone app [iTunes Link] is now available free of charge. The app was created by the New Media Team at NASA Ames Research Center, and for their first app it's surprisingly robust, bug-free and full of features.

The front screen of the app provides a window into current and future NASA missions. Along the bottom of the display are buttons for missions, images, videos, and updates. The updates are fairly current -- there were 11 posts about various Earth and space missions today alone -- and often include links to videos.

I found that the app worked best when I was downloading the videos over Wi-Fi, so be sure to keep that in mind if you're trying to get watch a launch video while on 3G service. Check out the gallery below for screenshots from the app.

Filed under: iPod Family, Odds and ends

iPods rock the Space Shuttle

Space Shuttle EndeavourUpdate 11/16/2008: Welcome Digg visitors. While there may be iPods on the current STS-126 mission, these photos & the blog post are actually from the March 2008 mission.

Eagle-eyed reader Walker was perusing hi-res photos of the Space Shuttle Endeavour (which is circling the planet at this moment, docked to the International Space Station in low-earth orbit) when he spotted an iPod through the crew cabin window. It's a massively cool find and we thought you'd like to know it's not the first time an iPod has braved the 3G hurtle into space.
  • When the unmanned Jules Verne spacecraft launched earlier this month for its historic docking with the ISS, it took along several commemorative items, including an iPod containing a special list of songs chosen by the winner of a 2007 contest.
  • STS crew member Leland Melvin went to the ISS last month aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis, and he took along an iPod pre-loaded with his favorite Christina McBride album and a few songs he'd composed on the piano.
  • For Charlie Hobaugh's flight last year, he let his kids load his iPod for him. (Wow, that's trusting -- he could have spent the 13-day mission listening to Alvin & the Chipmunks).
Getting an iPod into space isn't easy. The lithium batteries have to be replaced with specially certified alkaline batteries. Once docked, crew members can't bring them on board the Space Station, however, since they haven't been certified as safe in that environment.

Your iPod may never make it to outer space, but if you want to protect it on your daily land-based EVAs, why not wrap it in a piece of history? Get a case from everQuest Design that's made from a piece of the Soyuz parachute. From one space geek to another, I ask you: how cool is that?

Thanks Walker!

Filed under: Software

Mars24

If you like Mars, Nasa has the application for you. Mars24 tracks the time of day for numerous locations on Mars (those are Martian days, by the way).

It is free, and interesting. Isn't that what we all want in our software?

[Via PopSciBlog]

Tip of the Day

Want to create custom shortcuts? Head to the Keyboard Shortcuts tab of the Keyboard and Mouse part of System Preferences to create shortcuts for common tasks that appear in the Services menu. You can also add application shortcuts for tasks that appear in the menu bar of those programs.

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