Very soon it would be possible to feel the crunch of the Martian soil under your feet, or feel the Maritan wind on your face, or at least that is what Google and NASA are working at. The two have announced a formally established partnership to work together on a variety of challenging technical problems ranging from large-scale data management and massively distributed computing, to human-computer interfaces. The “Space Act”, as it is being called, has been chalked out ot bring NASA’s work more closely available to the public at large.
NASA has so far collected massive amounts of information about the planet, but most of it is stored deep within its databases. And whatever is available in public domain, is either scattered or difficult for non-experts to undersand
"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.
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 visualisation 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. What this means is that we may have a Google Moon or Google Mars, working quite like Google Earth. Right now, Google provides only two-dimensional views of Moon and Mars.
The teams from NASA and Google had previously met to discuss the many challenging computer science problems facing both organisations and ossible joint collaborations that could help address them. With this agreement, NASA and Google intend to collaborate in a variety of areas, including incorporating agency data sets in Google Earth, focusing on user studies and cognitive modeling for human computer interaction, and science data search utilising a variety of Google features and products.
In September last year, NASA and Google has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that outlines plans for cooperation on a variety of areas, including large-scale data management, massively distributed computing, bio-info-nano convergence, and encouragement of the entrepreneurial space industry. The MOU also highlights plans for Google to develop up to one million square feet within the NASA Research Park at Moffett Field, a project that is still in preliminary planning stages according to Google spokespersons.
NASA and Google also are finalising details for additional collaborations that include joint research, products, facilities, education and missions. |
