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Leon, Nancy J.

Publications and source records attributed to Leon, Nancy J..

Space Place Prime

Space Place Prime is public engagement and education software for use on iPad. It targets a multi-generational audience with news, images, videos, and educational articles from the Space Place Web site and other NASA sources. New content is downloaded daily (or whenever the user accesses the app) via the wireless connection. In addition to the Space Place Web site, several NASA RSS feeds are tapped to provide new content. Content is retained for the previous several days, or some number of editions of each feed. All content is controlled on the server side, so features about the latest news, or changes to any content, can be made without updating the app in the Apple Store. It gathers many popular NASA features into one app. The interface is a boundless, slidable- in-any-direction grid of images, unique for each feature, and iconized as image, video, or article. A tap opens the feature. An alternate list mode presents menus of images, videos, and articles separately. Favorites can be tagged for permanent archive. Face - book, Twitter, and e-mail connections make any feature shareable.

Fitzpatrick, Austin J.

GOES-R: Satellite Insight

GOES-R: Satellite Insight seeks to bring awareness of the GOES-R (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite -- R Series) satellite currently in development to an audience of all ages on the emerging medium of mobile games. The iPhone app (Satellite Insight) was created for the GOES-R Program. The app describes in simple terms the types of data products that can be produced from GOES-R measurements. The game is easy to learn, yet challenging for all audiences. It includes educational content and a path to further information about GOESR, its technology, and the benefits of the data it collects. The game features action-puzzle game play in which the player must prevent an overflow of data by matching falling blocks that represent different types of GOES-R data. The game adds more different types of data blocks over time, as long as the player can prevent a data overflow condition. Points are awarded for matches, and players can compete with themselves to beat their highest score.

Fitzpatrick, Austin J.

CometQuest: A Rosetta Adventure

This software is a higher-performance implementation of tiled WMS, with integral support for KML and time-varying data. This software is compliant with the Open Geospatial WMS standard, and supports KML natively as a WMS return type, including support for the time attribute. Regionated KML wrappers are generated that match the existing tiled WMS dataset. Ping and JPG formats are supported, and the software is implemented as an Apache 2.0 module that supports a threading execution model that is capable of supporting very high request rates. The module intercepts and responds to WMS requests that match certain patterns and returns the existing tiles. If a KML format that matches an existing pyramid and tile dataset is requested, regionated KML is generated and returned to the requesting application. In addition, KML requests that do not match the existing tile datasets generate a KML response that includes the corresponding JPG WMS request, effectively adding KML support to a backing WMS server.

Leon, Nancy J.

From Binary Notation to Gravitational Waves: Rocket Science Made Easy

The Space Place is a NASA educational outreach program open to all NASA missions, studies, and instruments. It uses diverse media (web, print, displays, hands-on activities) to deliver high-quality products through a highly leveraged infrastructure. Additional information is contained in the original extended abstract.

Fisher, Diane K.

Leveraging the Educational Outreach Efforts of Low-Cost Missions

A small portion of the budget for every NASA mission must be devoted to education and public outreach. The question is, how can projects best leverage these funds to create a high-quality message and get it disseminated to the largest and most appropriate audience? This paper describes the approach taken by a small educational outreach team for NASA's New Millennium Program (NMP). The team's approach has been twofold: develop a highly desirable suite of products designed to appeal to, as well as enlighten, the target audience; then negotiate relationships with existing, often under-utilized channels for dissemination of these products. Starting with NMP missions as the base of support for these efforts, the team has invited participation by other missions. This approach has resulted in a richer and broader message, and has allowed the continuing development of the audience base.

Fisher, Diane K.