WorldWind South Africa portal
Posted by Maurizio on 03 Feb 2007 at 10:45 am | Tagged as: Events, Maps, NASA WorldWind, Satellite Imagery, Virtual Globes
In occasion of the 2005 World Space Week WorldWind South Africa was introduced in South African schools. This electronic atlas of Southern Africa fruit of the collaboration of MadMappers, NASA, the SA Department of Science and Technology and coordinated by the SA Space Organization has now its own WorldWind South Africa portal.
The portal was realized by MadMappers in association with WorldWindCentral under the expert supervision of Bull_UK of the Free Earth Fundation.
South African space science and technology contribution to sustainable development is coordinated by the National Working Group on Space Science and Technology. Space Technology being defined as the technology in satellites and ground systems used by space scientists both looking up to study the universe and looking down to earth. It also includes delivery of services to users on the ground.
South Africa has a long tradition in space dating as far back as to 1685 and in Africa has a leading role in terms of facilities.
A South Africa Space Agency is currently being established and the ZA002 Small Satellite Programme is under way. The first satellite, named SumbandilaSat, will be positioned in a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to enable it to take high resolution images which will be used for agricultural and environmental management applications.
MadMappers’ aim is to offer African users an open source customable platform on which to display spatial information relative to their country. World Wind Africa servers already supply a wide selection of data, ranging from topological maps to vector data, from aerial photography and very high resolution imagery to DEMs. Hopefully in a not too distant future we will be able to make South African satellite data from SumbandilaSat accessible to all.
Special thanks to the Free Earth Fundation and the World Wind Community (in particular to Nowak, f0urtyfive and Bull_[UK]) for making this project possible.
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