NASA Ames Research Center and Google have signed a Space Act Agreement that formally establishes a relationship to work together on challenging technical problems. The whole aim of the collaboration is to make NASA massive data accessible to all stakeholders.
Google will help NASA in the following areas:
- Large-scale Data Management, e.g. incorporating agency data sets in Google Earth extension - Google Moon for public viewing, manage large-scale technical data for the benefits of NASA employees.
- Massive Distributed Computing, e.g. science data search utilizing a variety of Google technology, application of distributed computing power to scientific research.
- Human-computer Interfaces, e.g. user studies and cognitive modeling for human computer interaction.
The collaboration between Google and NASA will surely boost Google’s corporate image as consultant of rocket science computing. It is also beneficial to NASA as the vast majority of the information about our planet and universe collected over the years are scattered across technical archives and tapes. NASA needs Google’s strength on information technology to “sort out” those data.
The news release also mentioned the possibility of presenting NASA data in areas such as 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 in the future. Most of these features may be available as extensions to Google Earth.