The Space Shuttle in Google Earth

 

The space shuttle Atlantis is currently in flight on the program’s final voyage after launching from Cape Canaveral a few days ago, and NASA is providing some excellent tools to help track the shuttle in space.

Fist, they’ve provided a replay of the STS-135 ascent, including quite a lot of data about the shuttle as it lifted off.

 

shuttle-ascent.jpg 

Even better, they’ve also provided a live tracking file that updates every few seconds so you can follow the exact location of the shuttle.

 

shuttle-live.jpg 

While this is the end of the shuttle program, NASA has a variety of missions planned for the next six months, including unmanned journeys to Jupiter and Mars. Hopefully they’ll provide this kind of data for those flights as well.

On a side note, I was made aware of this by Rob Mayeda on Google+. While Google Earth Blog isn’t yet allowed to create a profile over there (only humans for now), I share Google Earth-related material fairly often and I’d love to connect with you on there. If you need an invitation to access Google+, you can request one from this site.

Sarawak: The damaged rainforest

The state of Sarawak, in Malaysian Borneo, is the site of an interesting political battle recently. Their Chief Minister claims that 70 of Sarawak’s forest cover is intact, but imagery from Google Earth seems to indicate that it’s far worse than that. In fact, some environmentalist groups estimate that logging has cost Sarawak 90 of it’s primary forest cover.

Mongabay has written a very detailed article about this situation, including quite a few photos. For example, the image below clearly shows logging roads all throughout Sarawak, while virtually none are visible in Brunei to the north.

 

sarawak.jpg 

Google Earth is making it increasing difficult for governments to lie about this kind of behavior. As the pace and quality of imagery updates continue to improve, things will only get better for those that wish to expose this type of thing.

Be sure to read the entire article on Mongabay for more information and many more photos.