ASTRA relies heavily on the visualization tools that they develop. Visualizations of data and models aid in cognition, hypotheses building, and reasoning, allowing ASTRA to do high quality scientific research.
Most of ASTRA’s visualizations are created using ITT’s IDL visualization software http://www.ittvis.com/idl/

You can learn more about IDL at:

The original image used for the texture taken from the NASA site.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/LCC/Images/lcc_global_2048.jpg

Image/flash credit: istockphoto File number:3865665 07-26-2007-bubaone