MOFFETT FIELD, CA - February 25, 2010
-- The NASA World Wind Java computer program developed at the agency's
Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., is the winner of NASA's
2009 Software of the Year Award.
Software engineers at Ames
created the NASA World Wind Java Software Development Kit and Web
Mapping Services Server. NASA World Wind Java is an open-source
platform used to display NASA and U.S. Geological Survey data on
virtual 3-D globes of Earth and other planets. The displayed
information comes from satellites, aerial photography, and topographic
and geographic data.
"I am absolutely delighted the NASA World
Wind team has been honored with this prestigious award," said Ames
Director S. Pete Worden. "The outstanding work of the NASA World Wind
team has made a significant and lasting contribution to Ames'
technology development portfolio and NASA's leadership in geospatial
technology."
NASA World Wind is user-friendly, using button or
mouse controls to rotate, pan and zoom through models. The program
engages the public to learn more about our planet and NASA technology.
To better enable government, commercial enterprises, and individual
developers to build the applications they need, the NASA World Wind
Java Software Development Kit is released under the NASA Open Source
Agreement and allows all users to review and test the software source
code.
Patrick Hogan leads the NASA World Wind team, which
includes Pat Moran, Tom Gaskins, Paul Collins, Lado Garakanidze,
Randolph Kim, Patrick Murris, Jay Parsons, Chris Maxwell and Rick
Brownrigg. Members of the software development team received medals
during a ceremony in February at the NASA Project Management Challenge
Conference in Galveston, Texas.
This year's runners up were
the Spacecraft Planet Instrument C-Matrix Events Toolkit from NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the Copernicus
Trajectory Design and Optimization System from NASA's Johnson Space
Center in Houston. Honorable mentions included the Nondestructive
Evaluation Wave and Image Processor Software from NASA's Glenn Research
Center in Cleveland, the Lightning Protection Design and Verification
Tool from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the System
Identification Programs for Aircraft from NASA's Langley Research
Center in Hampton, Va.
The Office of Safety and Mission
Assurance and the Chief Information Officer sponsor the NASA Software
of the Year Competition to identify innovative software technologies
that significantly improve the agency's exploration of space and
maximize scientific discovery on Earth. A NASA Software Advisory Panel
assesses and ranks the entries and reports its findings to NASA's
Inventions and Contributions Board. Ames has won or been a co-winner of
the NASA Software of the Year award eight times since it was initiated
in 1994.
For more information about NASA's Inventions and Contributions Board, visit: http://icb.nasa.gov.
For more information and to download NASA World Wind, visit: http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/java.
For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov.