One of the best things about using an iPad is all the great apps that we can run on it. There are excellent apps for just about any purpose you can think of. Better still, there are lots of great free apps for the iPad. Our Best Free iPad App of the Week posts highlight these apps.

This week’s pick is NASA’s Space Place Prime. Some of you who are veteran readers here may notice that I have chosen three other NASA apps as selections in this series: NASA App HD, Ascent: Commemorating Shuttle, and NASA Visualization Explorer. I can assure you I’m not on NASA’s payroll (I wish) and I’ll be happy to stop picking their titles as soon as they stop making such superb apps and charging nothing for them. :)

Space Place Prime is a spinoff of NASA’s Space Place website – spaceplace.nasa.gov – targeted at kids. The app pulls recent and curated best content from the site and presents it in a slide-able grid of thumbnails.

Each thumbnail is linked to a featured item. Some are images, like APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) selections, some are videos, and some are fun, kid-friendly articles. The content can also be viewed in  list and carousel views.

The images are stunning of course, and have accompanying information text that’s easily toggled on and off with a single tap.

The app gets daily updates with more NASA images and videos of earth and space. You can save items as favorites and share them via email, Twitter and Facebook.

This is yet another kid-friendly, family friendly app from NASA that’s packed with great content.

Here’s an App Store link for Space Place Prime.

If you’re after more great free iPad apps, be sure to check out our previous choices for Best Free iPad of the Week. We’ve also recently put together a best of the best of our selections from the last year in a Top 25 Best Free iPad Apps list.

If you have suggestions for great free iPad apps you’d like to see covered here please fire away in the comments here or via our Contact page.