Nasa is celebrating two launches: one of its new Ares 1-X rocket— the replacement for the Shuttle — and the other of a new app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The free Nasa app gives users access to agency news and Twitter feeds with updates on its missions, including the Mars rovers and lunar probes, along with the agency’s impressive photo library and some frankly dull video clips, plus live updates from the International Space Station (current status: still up). You can also see footage of the Ares 1-X, which lifted off from Florida last week, including pictures taken from its onboard camera.

Nasa’s first new spacecraft for nearly three decades, Ares will eventually send astronauts to the moon. While you are waiting, you could try the Nasa widget that gives advance warning of a major asteroid impact (jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch), available for Mac users and those with Yahoo widgets on their PCs.

Astronomy and space-flight buffs are well served by app stores. For example, Android phone owners can download Google Sky (free), which uses GPS to determine where in the heavens the handset is pointing. It then displays all the stars and planets you’d be able to see if it weren’t for light pollution and the British weather. Far more graphically advanced — and, at £5.49, much more expensive — is iStellar for the iPhone and Touch, a mobile planetarium complete with twinkling stars and updates for comets as they’re discovered.

Not all space apps are quite so worthy. Galaxy Collider (59p for iPhone and Touch) brings you the god-like power to smash billions of stars into one another and watch as they interact. Budding astronauts, meanwhile, can play Apollo 11: The Game (59p for iPhone and Touch), which takes you through training to the first moon landing then Earth re-entry. It is so tricky, it takes about as long to complete as a real-life space mission.

Spot any of the above on an iPhone homescreen and you can be sure the owner is harmless, if a little geeky. But run a mile if you see Werewolf Reminder (59p for iPhone and Touch), which simply counts down the seconds until midnight on the next full moon. And people say there’s nothing useful in the App Store ...

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