Science Team From Ames Research Center Wins 2009 NASA Software of Year Award

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif., Feb. 25 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- 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.

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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

SOURCE NASA