Software for Displaying Coregistered Sets of Data

The DataSlate computer program is being developed to help educators and students gain access to, view, manipulate, and otherwise interact with sets of planetary and other scientific data via the Internet or via local data-storage facilities. DataSlate will be especially useful for displaying coregistered sets of data; for example, a topographical map of a region and a photograph of the same region taken from an aircraft or a satellite. DataSlate, associated software tools, and sets of data will be distributed via the Internet or provided on compact-disk read-only memories (CD-ROMs). The architecture of DataSlate is extensible, so that new software tools and sets of data can be added and educators can design new components of curricula. Sets of data, lesson plans, and software tools can be created by educators and students and uploaded to servers for public use or kept on local computers for private use. The initial development of DataSlate has been a joint project of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, and Johns Hopkins University. Both DataSlate and a set of software tools for preparing associated sets of data and curricula are expected to be extended by a team of developers within the next few years. DataSlate will be useful to the scientific community and the general public as well as to the educational community.