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Google Earth: Hurricane Irene

Hurricane Irene, which has already done some serious damage to Puerto Rico, was recently captured in stunning high resolution by NASA’s Terra satellite as it heads toward the east coast of the United States.

You can view the image on NASA’s Earth Observatory website, or view it in Google Earth using this KML file. Be aware the KML is loading the full 5 MB file from NASA’s server, as it’s amazingly sharp, so it’ll take a few moments to load.

To track the Hurricane and view it’s forecasted track, turn on your Places layer and an icon will appear over the Hurricane. Clicking that icon will give you access to details about the Hurricane, along with historical data and various projected paths.

The Liquid Galaxy at the Space Museum in Washington

Thirty-five years ago this week, the Viking 1 lander touched down on the surface of Mars, beginning an olympian mission of exploration lasting more than 6 years. Today, the Liquid Galaxy immersive Google Earth display lands at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, in the “Moving Beyond Earth” exhibit.

Photo by Mark Avino, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

It’s part of the museum’s annual Mars Day! event, where visitors can learn about the red planet, past and future missions to Mars, and talk to scientists active in Mars research. Adding to the excitement, NASA has just announced the location of the landing site for the next mission to Mars, the Mars Science Laboratory. In November, this SUV-sized robot will make the leap into space and is expected to land in Gale Crater, to look for signs that Mars might have once harbored life.

Designed during engineers’ 20% time, Liquid Galaxy consists of several screens in a circular arrangement, all running Google Earth in parallel for an immersive virtual experience. Visitors can use the podium with touchscreen and a 3D mouse to navigate to an up-close and personal near-360-degree view of the landing site in Google Earth, as well as anywhere else on Mars, the Moon, and of course Earth.

Admission to the museum is free, so be sure to stop by the next time your travels take you to the capital of the United States. While you’re there, enjoy the largest collection of historic spacecraft and aircraft in the world, including a proof test article of the Viking Mars Lander. (Of course, the Viking 1 lander itself took a one-way trip!)

If you can’t make the trip to Washington or Mars yourself, you can always explore the Martian surface from the comfort of your own home using Google Earth, checking out the progress of the current crop of robot explorers, seeing the latest imagery from orbiting satellites or scouting out the Mars Science Laboratory’s future landing site for yourself.

The Nabro Volcano in Africa imaginery

The Nabro volcano in the northeast African nation of Eritrea erupted for the first time in recorded history following a series of earthquakes. The ash has since spread more than 60km over the Ethiopian border and the volcano has emitted the highest levels for sulfer dioxide gas ever detected from space.

NASA has been publishing a small stream of images from the volcano, including some stunning shots such as the one seen above. Even better, they happened to capture a photo of Nabro back in January of this year, providing a crystal clear shot of the volcano prior to the eruption.

You can view that image on NASA’s site, or in Google Earth using this KML file.

The volcano has caused some minor disruption to air travel, but nothing on the scale of Eyjafjallajokull eruption in Iceland last year. Even better, the level of ash coming out of the volcano has begun to diminish, as has the level of seismic activity in the region.

Be sure to check out the full gallery of images on the NASA Earth Observatory site to see all of the amazing imagery that they’ve captured so far.