World Wind lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth. Leveraging Landsat satellite imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data, World Wind lets you experience Earth terrain in visually rich 3D, just as if you were really there.

Virtually visit any place in the world. Look across the Andes, into the Grand Canyon, over the Alps, or along the Afriadcan Sahara.

Open Source
NASA has released World Wind as an open source program to improve its quality through peer review, maximize awareness and impact of NASA research, and increase dissemination of World Wind in support of NASA's mission: To inspire the next generation of explorers ... as only NASA can.

A World Wide Collaboration
World Wind is a collaborative effort between NASA Intelligent System Division, the USRA Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science ( RIACS ), and the Open Source Community. World Wind started as a NASA Learning Technologies project, with emphasis on education and outreach.

NASA World Wind leverages Microsoft .NET technology for rapid development and to easily access open standards such as XML, WMS, and other graphics standards. Real-time 3D graphics are driven by DirectX allowing a wide base of compatibility with accelerated video hardware.

Primary data sources come from NASA, and TerraServer-USA of Microsoft Research.