NASA Earth Observations (NEO): Moving Data Access Forward for Outreach and Education

NASA Earth Observations (NEO) dramatically simplifies public access to georeferenced imagery of NASA remote sensing data. NEO targets the unsophisticated, non-traditional data users who are currently underserved by the existing data ordering systems. These users include formal and informal educators, museum and science center personnel, professional communicators, and citizen scientists and amateur Earth observers. NEO currently serves imagery from 10 different datasets with daily, weekly, and monthly temporal resolutions (including 3 datasets that also have 5-minute regional resolutions). There will be an additional 13 datasets added by the end of 2006. Users are able to view and manipulate georeferenced browse imagery within the NEO interface itself (e.g., applying color palettes, subsetting, and importing to NASA's Earth Observatory's Image Composite Editor), open NEO imagery directly using third party software (e.g., Google Earth, any GeoTIFF or WMS capable application), and, if they desire, download or order the source HDF data directly from the data provider via a single, integrated interface.