NASA’S NEW SPACE SIMULATOR It’s free!

SPACE SIMULATOR

Calling NASA’S Eyes a ‘space simulator’ is like calling the International Space Station a vehicle. This incredible tool, developed by NASA’S Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, lets you virtually explore our solar system and beyond. It’s rendered in glorious interactive 3D using current NASA mission data. It’s also the simulator to end all simulators, and it made me gasp with joy.

Version 5.4 was released to coincide with August’s solar eclipse over the United States – just one of the events given the full Nasa’s-eye-view treatment here. The update adds full support for 64bit PCS, and ditches support for Windows XP and Vista.

The program is quick and easy to install. It updates with the latest NASA data every time you launch it, and then displays a dashboard where you can choose an area to explore: ‘Eyes on the Earth’, which lets you fly along with NASA satellites; ‘Eyes on the Solar System’, which has Simple and Advanced options (I clicked Advanced for the screenshot below); and ‘Eyes on Exoplanets’, which goes beyond our planetary neighbourhood. Alternatively, click a featured tour (‘module’) such as Juno Mission, ‘Eyes on Pluto’ or Cassini’s Tour (recommended, not least because Cassini reaches its destination on Saturn on 15 September). Controls vary slightly between modules, but they’re all very intuitive – and you can hover over any item for a quick tip.

It’s hard to find fault with NASA’S Eyes. It even works offline. I launched Cassini’s Tour after disabling my internet, and the experience was no different from when I’d been online. You will need to be online to get the latest NASA data when you launch the program, though.

This is the ‘Eyes on the Solar System’ Advanced screen. Scroll to zoom; double-click a planet or satellite’s name to zoom to it; and click and drag to pan and tilt the view.

To launch a tour, click ‘Tours & Features’, then click a thumbnail. ‘Eyes on the Solar System’ currently offers nine tours including Cassini, Voyager and Eclipse 2017.

Click ‘Tours & Features’ again to hide the thumbnails and reveal icons including fullscreen, ‘flood lighting’ and help. Click the home icon to return to the default view.

Use the dock boxes to configure options such as virtual flight speed. Multimedia content (next box along) opens in your browser. Click a box heading to expand it.