NASA/Google to Bring Space Exploration to Earth

By spenser.d
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Grand Master

spenser.d

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NASA and Google to Bring Space Exploration Down to Earth

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. - NASA Ames Research Center and Google have signed a Space Act Agreement that formally establishes a relationship to work together on a variety of challenging technical problems ranging from large-scale data management and massively distributed computing, to human-computer interfaces.

As the first in a series of joint collaborations, Google and Ames will focus on making the most useful of NASA's information available on the Internet. Real-time weather visualization and forecasting, high-resolution 3-D maps of the moon and Mars, real-time tracking of the International Space Station and the space shuttle will be explored in the future.

"This agreement between NASA and Google will soon allow every American to experience a virtual flight over the surface of the moon or through the canyons of Mars," said NASA Administrator Michael Griffin at Headquarters in Washington. "This innovative combination of information technology and space science will make NASA's space exploration work accessible to everyone," added Griffin.

"Partnering with NASA made perfect sense for Google, as it has a wealth of technical expertise and data that will be of great use to Google as we look to tackle many computing issues on behalf of our users," said Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer of Google. "We're pleased to move forward to collaborate on a variety of technical challenges through the signing of the Space Act Agreement."

Sounds interesting.

Read the full press release here.

-Spenser

Grand Master

+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹

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haven't they sort of done this already?

http://moon.google.com

http://mars.google.com

I'm guessing it'll be a bit more like Google Earth rather than Google Maps, a 3D representation.

Besides, Google Moon isn't exactly complete... however it does solve the issue of what the moon is made of...

Neowinian

kaozgamer12

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I'm guessing it'll be a bit more like Google Earth rather than Google Maps, a 3D representation.

Besides, Google Moon isn't exactly complete... however it does solve the issue of what the moon is made of...

If you zoom in real close on http://moon.google.com it shows you that the moon is made up of cheese!!!! Who knew those tom & jerry cartoons were right all along

Grand Master

The_Decryptor Veteran

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Maybe it will be a bit like Celestia? My kids love that program, and I have used it when talking about space in Cub Scouts.

Celestia rocks, integrate that with Google Earth/WorldWind and NASA data, and it would just be win.

And speaking of WorldWind, what does this announcement mean for it?

Grand Master

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If you zoom in real close on http://moon.google.com it shows you that the moon is made up of cheese!!!! Who knew those tom & jerry cartoons were right all along

that is what I was hinting at :p

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