NASA Historic Photos App Now Available

 

Since its creation in 1958, NASA has been taking pictures of the Earth, the Moon, the planets, and other astronomical objects inside and outside our Solar System. Under United States copyright law, works created by the U.S. federal government or its agencies cannot be copyrighted. (This does not apply to works created by state or local governments.) Therefore, the NASA pictures are legally in the public domain. One of the best organized collection of images and information is available on Flickr, as part of the Commons project at https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasacommons/sets/. Organized into 60 Albums (or Sets), the collection contains some of the very best images and accompanying information on NASA through the years.

I’m a real space buff, and have spent hours viewing bits of space exploration history. Flickr has done a great job of packaging information within 60 categories and it struck me that this content would make a great Windows 8.1 App. I ‘ve been working on this app for a while, and I’m happy to announce that my new free app, NASA Historic Photos is now available in the Windows Store. 

I’ve included the very best of the 60 albums into a Windows 8.1 app that contains 60 scrollable galleries with descriptive information. I’m hoping that other space aficionados find it useful.

The home screen contains a menu, presented as a scrollable gallery. Scroll through the 60 items with touch or your mouse and then select an individual gallery to view.

Once you’ve selected a gallery, you can navigate with touch or mouse. I’ve constructed the app so that the individual items within each gallery should “snap” into place as you scroll. Below is a sample showing one of the galleries. You’ll see an image, an accompanying description (if available) and the date published (not the date of the event, which I hope to add in a future release).

When you’ve finished viewing an individual gallery, select the Home button to return to the main screen and select another gallery. You’ll find galleries for all the missions, Apollo, Gemini, the Space Shuttle and lots more. Below is another sample gallery.

You’ll find hyperlinks to the source material below the images. Just click or tap to open in your browser.

 

Please download NASA Historic Photos  at http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/app/nasa-historic-photos/fd89541e-aa2f-45b5-88de-e7fe493b3b5a and let me know what you think on Twitter @barbbowman (or even write an app review).