Send space
greeing cards over the internet to friends, family, and
colleagues. (For paper space-themed postcards, see Lunar
Traders - Category Postcards.)
Apollo
Lunar Landing Guidance & Control
Ron Noteborn's provides lots of fascinating details about
the lunar landing system and includes several interactive
applets.
"...children's interactive adventure though
our solar system. Guide Arty and his alien friend
Greg to the many sites of our solar system. A site
for the young Astronomer."
Solar
System Coloring Book
Windows on the Universe offers this nicely made Java program
in which you choose a planet, moon or the sun and paint
in the colors.
Coriolis
Acceleration - Ian
Woollard - explore the effects of the Coriolis
force as would be found in space station rotating
to provide artificial gravity.
StereoLander
This Java applet try to land on Mars while watching
your spacecraft in a stereogram display.
ActiveWorld
An online virtual reality universe that has grown to involve hundreds
of thousands of users with over 1000 unique worlds.
Included in this VR universe is a whole Mars world with spaceports and
colonies.
"Originally designed in 1997 as a demo project for NASA, the virtual
world Mars has been open for colonization by Active Worlds' residents
since 1998; and is one of the more popular hang outs for adventurous
humans and extra-terrestrials alike." - Mars tour homepage.
AstroArts
- Online Simulators AstroArts is a Japanese site with
lots of astronomy related information, links and resources. This page
includes several astronomy programs including sunrise/sunset calculator,
Moon calendar, Planisphere and Orbit viewers for comets & asteroids.
BBC
- Solar System
The BBC Online offers a large and sophisticated space
site concerning the planets and general space exploration related
topics.
Earth
Observatory - NASA
Very nice educational site about earth observation. The Observation Deck
section allows you to build animations showing changes on the earth
as since from space over long periods. For example, look at the changes
in Vegetation
since 1981.
MSNBC
Space Interactivity
MSNBC, which offers a daily spacenews
page, provides several space online interaction programs such as:
The space shuttle’s transporter, International
Space Station Model and the Space Gallery, which opens a special viewer
with several interactive productions.
New
York Times - Exploring the Solar System
These pages at the NYT (free registration to NYT site required) provide
lots of info about the planets, the Sun and other components of our solar
system. Including are some interactive programs (download of a plug-in
needed) that display:
National Geographic Interactive Space
Virtual Solar System - 3-D views in a "fly-by tour of the
sun and each planet in its orbit, observe close-up views of the planets,
extraterrestrial weather patterns, and more."
Return
to Mars : Numerous 3-D panorama simulations of the Mars Pathfinder
mission to Mars.
Solar
System Simulator
Great simulator available from JPL that will display all sorts of info about
the solar system and the probes sent out to explore it.
Time/Life
Space
History, images, and VR simulations such as the
Johnson Space Center QTVR. Use Quicktime VR to explore the JSC
mission control rooms, Space Station module, shuttle flight deck and more.
Virtual
Space Museum
The VSM provides VR models of various Russian and Soviet spacecraft.
Virtual Reality
Archive at MSFC
NASA Marshall Spaceflight Center (MSFC) offers an archive of many space
related VR simulations.
How
Far Is It
This program calculates the distance between any two cities
on earth.
Map
Maker Make a map of any area on earth using this powerful
program developed by Tony Steinke, Charles
Sturt University in Australia.
Moon applets/ programs
Phase
of the Moon - Were you born under a full moon?
Will your next camping trip have a moonless sky to
see the stars at their brightest? Use this program
from the US Navy to see the phase of the moon for
any day between 1800-2199 AD.
Moon
Tracking - Java program to give current azimuth
& elevation of the Moon for a given location.
Frink,
created by Alan Eliasen. At the simplest level it
just does unit conversion but, as these sample
calculations show, it can do an amazing range
of calculations with one or a few lines of code.
It "is optimized for doing quick, off-the-cuff
calculations with a minimum of typing".
You can use in with a form
or an applet.
You can also download
it and use it off line.
Modeling
the Periodic Table
The NASA Genesis
Mission will collect particles from the solar wind
and return them to earth. To practice analysis of the
chemical composition of the samples, try their online
Shockwave program.
SETI@home
Help analyze actual SETI
(Search for Extraterrestial Intelligence) data with
your screensaver. More info on the HobbySpace
SETI page.
Storm Tracking
Tracking
The Eye - Hurricane Tracking Software
This shareware program from GenCode
Technologies allows you to track hurricanes in
real time using data and satellite imagery downloaded
from weather databases on the web. Lots of options,
graphics and animation features.
It runs in standalone mode, i.e. outside of a
browser, but needs at least a part-time link to
the Internet to work.
SWIFT WX
Track your position over any weather map using GPS
and monitor severe weather in real-time. Useful for
Tornado Chasers.
Orbital
Mechanics
These demos teach some of the basics of orbital mechanics:
Powers
of Ten - neat Java program that shows how a few
factors of ten can take you from the atom out to the
edges of the galaxy.
SETI
range calculator online program by Eric Johnston
at Scotland's
Seti that calculates the range of the radio signals
that might be sent by extraterrestrials based on the
size of the transmission dish, power, frequency, and
bandwidth.
Heavens-Above
(previously GSOC Satellite Predictions)
Online Program at German Space Observation Centre is an excellent and easy
to use source to obtain the latest information on satellites passing over
your location tonight. After providing the program with your location for
the first time, you should bookmark the page. The bookmark will then include
your location so that clicking on the bookmark will automatically give the
satellite data for your position.
