September 6, 2006 - Haze in the Po River Valley of Italy is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 13 crewmember onboard the International Space Station. The valley is visible across the horizontal center of the frame, with the floor obscured by what NASA scientists refer to as frequent atmospheric haze, a mixture of industrial pollutants, dust and smoke. The visual texture of such haze is perceptibly different from that of bright white clouds which stretch across the top of the scene and cover part of the Alps. Northern Italy is in the foreground of this southwesterly view. The partially cloud-covered Alps are at lower right; the Adriatic Sea at lower left. Corsica is under partial cloud cover at center; and Sardinia, almost totally obscured, is to its south. The island of Elba is visible just to the west of Italy. By contrast with haze accumulation along the axis of the valley, the Alps and the Apennines are clearly visible, and Lake Garda can be seen in the foothills of the Alps. Other visible geographic features are the lagoon at Venice north of the Po River delta, and three small lakes north of Rome.

NASA helps businesses make use of its satellite data

NASA has made its raw satellite data widely available for a long while. Now that it has a privatization-minded leader, though, it’s looking to make that data more palatable for the business crowd. The administration has released a Remote Sensing Toolkit that should make it easier to use observational satellite info for commercial purposes, including straightforward business uses as well as conservation and research. The move consolidates info that used to be scattered across “dozens” of websites, and helps you search that unified database for helpful knowledge — you don’t have to go to one place for atmospheric studies and another to learn about forests.

The kit includes both some ready-to-use tools for making sense of satellite content as well as the code companies can use to craft their own tools.

It’s easy to see concerns that NASA might downplay purely scientific uses of its data as a result. Still, this might be overdue. The earlier approach may have offered massive amounts of content (petabytes, NASA said), but there was no one repository where you could find everything you needed. This could encourage more use of that data for all purposes, not just for companies hoping to make a profit.

Source: engadget.com


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