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World Space Party: Yuri’s Night!

Tonight is Yuri’s Night, the anniversary of the first human to make it into space and live to tell about it! Named after Yuri Gagarin, who took his epic ride on April 12th, 1961, this date is now used to celebrate all aspects of humanities continuing efforts to leave this gravity well. That first link will get you details to 183 events in 44 countries on 7 continents, so there will be something going on near you (unless you live way out to sea, in Antarctica, or along the full length of the former Siberia/Alaska land bridge and the lands it tied together). And even if you live in those places, or just don’t feel like driving, there are 9 Online Parties so you can celebrate with your friends at the Second Life International Space Flight Museum or Second Life Frontier Spaceport, the Foundation for Space Development at Mach30, and at Area 52, Outlands for you WoW folks (message HumanityPlus in-game for details, that event is on the 17th).

If you are a bit more serious than that, go for the Constellation Apps platform party, if you have the application development enviro installed, or hit NASA’s Third Rock Radio to listen to it all come down, or watch on SpaceVidcast online or on Roku. There are a lot more; find the one that works for you and join us in celebrating mankind’s attempt to escape this cosmic trap, and survive through the ensuing millennium.

What about Jupiter?

There have never been that many moments of actual footage of Jupiter videos or individual photos of the planet, because no physical camera has ever returned from there for us to develop the film. But this compilation of digital images returned to Earth over the last handful of decades and assembled by some of the more skillful editors at NASA gives you a taste of what is going on out there, and I for one would love to get a closer look.

NASA Apps

One of the most interesting Apps not included in NASA Apps is 3D Sun. This is a display interface taking the data-stream output of two satellites orbiting Sol which, between them, cover around 87% of the sun’s surface at any given time. The results are generated into a 3D image on your screen, giving you a near-realtime idea of what exactly is going on the Sun. That also gives you some great advance warning about possible disruptive events that might be about to overtake you, your computer systems, your communications networks, and and other non-hardened systems that work on electricity or magnetism. The sun is the origin of most (but not all) disruptive events that might come from space and mess with your systems, and there are factors which can mitigate even its effects on your environment. To refine the results and factor in other influences, the NASA Space Weather App gives you most of the rest of the tool set you need. It includes data sources from NOAA, GOES, and SOHO, among more.

Build Your Own: NASA Apps

In fact, they wish you would! The International Space Apps Challenge is looking for folks to create Apps for smartphones and tablets based on any aspect of space research and exploration. In fact it goes beyond that, they are looking for practical applications that will take data from space agencies around the planet and use it to resolve real world problems. Early warning of dangerous weather events as seen from satellites, air and noise pollution mapping, using networks of cell phone as a large aperture telescope are just a few of the recommended ideas. The challenge has not kicked off yet but you can sign up and start submitting ideas now.