PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
Contact: Edward "Skip" McNevin
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEFebruary 1, 1996
PLANETARY IMAGES AVAILABLE AT NEW WEB SITE
One of the world's most popular photo collections -- images
of the planets produced by the U.S. space program -- goes online
in a central location today as part of a joint project between
NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
NASA's Planetary Photojournal, accessible on the Internet
via the World Wide Web, enables access to NASA's archive of
planetary images for viewing and use by the public, scientists,
educators and publishers.
"This Web site opens a fresh window on the planets and what
we have learned from them," said Wesley T. Huntress Jr., NASA
associate administrator for space science. "Communication is the
final and probably the most important step in the scientific
process. Using some of the same computer technology that helps
us generate new discoveries, this partnership with the USGS will
allow us to share this knowledge with people everywhere."
"The new system currently provides access to images residing
in collections at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and at the USGS,
Flagstaff, AZ, along with captions and other information such as
mapping data," said Sue LaVoie, a member of the development team
at JPL. The site features thumbnail and browse-size versions of
the images for viewing and provides user-friendly digital
downloading of images in a variety of formats and sizes.
Access is provided not only to the most popular images but
to the entire primary image data sets from various space
missions, LaVoie added. Links are provided to commercial vendors
for ordering hard copies of photographs, slides, CD-ROMs and
other imaging data products from the collection.
Other links in the new system allow users to jump to and
browse other space image data collections, LaVoie said. Pointers
and links to other sites, such as space mission home pages, also
New images released from NASA missions will be placed on the
system in parallel with release to the news media.
The URL for the new NASA Planetary Photojournal is:
At JPL, the Planetary Photojournal development team was led
by LaVoie and included Eric DeJong, Elizabeth Duxbury, Myche
McAuley, Edward McNevin III and Jurrie van der Woude, while the
USGS team was led by Larry Soderblom and included Eric Eliason
and Haig Morgan.