NASA's climatologists have an enormous problem: when it comes to data on the atmosphere, they have too much of it. To help understand climate change, NASA has created its Earth Observing System (EOS), made up of a dozen satellites plus a host of weather balloons and ground-based sensors that collect data such as air temperatures, water-vapour densities and aerosol concentrations. Terabytes of such measurements have been streaming in each day, and the agency was quickly swamped with so much data that all it could do was dump it on disc drives. Now it has hit on a simple way to make that data accessible: software that superimposes it on the global 3D maps provided by Google Earth. Called iEarth, the NASA software scours EOS databanks for information and converts it into a file that can be viewed via Google Earth. Choosing a spot on the planet's surface will prompt iEarth to display ground-based measurements for that location, as well as data relating to the atmosphere and space above it. The iEarth system will be available for anyone to use in April.
Gaia was an open source 3D earth viewer — in their own words: "an attempt to reverse engineer famous Google Earth and implement its functionality in open, portable, customisable and extendable way." Last week, it was featured on the Google Operating System blog, no doubt what tipped off Google to its existence. The Gaia project was delivered a C & D order from Michael Jones, Chief Technologist of Google Earth, Maps, and Local Search. The original letter was polite, and did a pretty good job explaining the project violates the Google Earth TOS.
Google Earth Tracks Nuclear bombs The satellite map "offers a fresh accounting of the extensive U.S. nuclear inventory, and its dynamic graphics let site users 'fly' onscreen across a sprawling network of military facilities in 12 states and in Europe"
Ever wanted to see what volcanic eruptions, dust storms and changing ice glaciers look like from space? The European Space Agency (ESA) has created a special layer of content that will appear in Google Earth, enabling people to see over 130 new ESA satellite images including natural phenomena and manmade landmarks such as the Palm Islands in Dubai.
Google has provoked the wrath of Iran's notoriously suspicious authorities by appearing to question the country's sovereignty over the province of Azerbaijan in an entry on its Google Video website. In a move tailor-made to wound Iranian patriotic pride and arouse a blizzard of protest, the Azeri provincial capital, Tabriz, is located "in southern Azerbaijan, currently in the territory of Iran". To add insult to injury, the ancient city is listed as being in Azerbaijan, rather than Iran. Tabriz and southern Azerbaijan have belonged to Iran for more than 4 000 years.
Since map programs with satellite images took the world by storm in 2005, aerial photography has become crucial to everyone from firefighters to real estate tax assessors.
The Google Earth Space Atlas was put together in honour of the Wirefly X PRIZE Cup. The concept is to have to have one location for a map of Google Earth placemarks for anything space-related on the Earth. We have pulled together collections from the Google Earth Community, and created a wealth of new material. Included are placemarks to space centres of many countries, launch sites, space museums, planetariums, moon trees, meteor impact craters, space shuttle landing sites, and more