NASA develops space weather app for Android smartphones

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. is pleased to announce that its Space Weather App, previously only available for iPhone users, is now available for users of Android smartphone and tablet users. The Space Weather App, which was developed jointly by Goddard's engineering and science directorates, with support from NASA's Heliophysics Division and the National Science Foundation, is capable of giving users real-time access to solar-event images, model simulations, data, and forecasts as they evolve and affect the near-Earth space environment.

The Space Weather App allows users to view Solar Coronal Mass Ejections, or CMEs, minutes after an event occurs. The CME events are observed from satellites such as the European Space Agency and NASA jointly developed Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO), and NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).

The possible effects of these solar storms can also be visualized by accessing one of the many space weather model data products that use observational data to forecast potentially hazardous space environment effects.

"Our folks heard the cry," said Michael Hesse, Heliophysics Science Division Chief at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and former chief of the Space Weather Laboratory. "We started with a space weather app for the iPhone. Now Android phone users can access space weather on the go – anyplace and anytime – downloading the same world-class, state-of-the-art information used by professionals in the space science community."

In addition to the NASA provided observational and simulation data products, the Space Weather App uses space weather resources from a host of collaborators, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and their Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES).

All the data products used in the NASA Space Weather application are selectable, allowing for user customization of display configurations based on the products of interest to each user.