By Amanda Wills2013-05-03 21:40:47 UTCNASA has Twitter down to a science. The agency knows the ins and outs of YouTube. It even even makes Google+ look cool.
But what you may not know is that NASA has plenty of forgotten features all over its websites, just waiting for geeks to uncover. Here are six of them.
Just what are astronauts in space doing at this exact moment? NASA's International Space Station Live lets you monitor everyone's daily tasks in real time on the ISS, from Chris Hadfield to Roman Romanenko.
The site features a timeline of each crewmember's activities, like performing science experiments, extravehicular activities and the more mundane eating, exercising and sleeping.
Every time you brush your teeth, you're using a NASA technology. The agency once worked with a hospital to create a pleasant-tasting toothpaste that could be swallowed. It was originally created for astronauts, who have limited access to bathrooms while in orbit.
Space technology like this is part of your everyday life, and you may not even know it. The NASA Home and City interactive feature shows how commercial spinoffs of space science have improved life on Earth — from temper foam and baby food to flame-retardant materials and invisible braces.
The International Space Station orbits 240 miles above us at 175,000 miles per hour. Because it's the third-brightest object in the sky, you can see the ISS from Earth without a telescope. The trick is all in the timing.
Last November, NASA released its Spot the Station app that sends you an email or text alert when the station is visible from your area. Subscribers can have notifications sent to their phones a few hours before the optimal sighting time, so you can always be prepared.
Downloading ringtones may have gone out of style — but not if those sounds are from Sputnik or Shuttle Discovery. NASA hosts a website where you can download every space sound you can think of — "The Eagle Has Landed" for a voicemail and Cassini: Enceladus for texts. The ringtones are available in both MP3 and M4R formats.
Not that ringtones would come in very handy in the silence of space, of course.
NASA's Eyes on the Solar System uses mission data to create a 3D environment that lets you visualize our celestial neighbors.
You get to control space and time: hop on an asteroid, buddy up with Curiosity rover as she lands on Mars or travel to the very edge of the solar system with Voyager (and it won't even take you 35 years to get there).
You'll have to make sure you have Java installed for this one. But trust us, it's worth it.
Perhaps the best part of this hub is that it reminds us that NASA's illustrious astronauts are, at heart, really just nerds like us. Over the past few years, some fabulous photoshopping whiz at the agency has produced promotional posters featuring astronauts as other kinds of geek icons.
While the usual nerdy suspects made this list — Star Trek provided the inspiration for the International Space Station's Expedition 21, while Expedition 16 appears in Matrix-style costumes — NASA also threw in nods to Reservoir Dogs and The Beatles. How could you not love this?
Images courtesy of NASA
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