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Riding on the Moon

Special space rockets are being developed in order some day to take tourists to the moon. A software maker is about to start the adventure by simulating a lunar ride for the simple PC user. Virtue Arts, a Los Angeles-based company, has developed software that renders the exact physics and topology of the moon in a 3D game, and lets players drive the lunar surface, gaze at the galaxy or study objects that were left by NASA astronauts on real missions.

The application was revealed at NASA Ames Research Center. NASA Ames plans to use the software to engineer space vehicles and train astronauts for future missions. Virtue will sell lunar exploration software to schools and consumers starting this fall.

Mary Duda, founder and CEO of Virtue Arts, said in an interview: "This revolutionizes the use of visualization technology--it brings it down to everyone`s computer". Virtue Arts engineered its game and moon-exploration software with publicly available data that NASA and other international space agencies have collected from missions to the moon. The lunar software also includes exact renderings of the constellations, the Earth, the Sun and the galaxies.