Agreement First In Planned Series Of Collaborations

What if you could explore the canyons of the Red Planet yourself, from the comfort of your home? You might soon be able to, if a series of collaborations between NASA and the webmeisters at Google bear fruit.

Announced Monday, the Space Act Agreement between Google and NASA Ames Research Center aims to make NASA's space exploration work more accessible to the websurfing public.

Reuters reports much of the information the partnership aims to consolidate is already on the web... but the images and data are scattered among dozens of websites. The project, if successful, would bridge these images together, and allow viewers to see details of Mars and Earth's moon in much the same way they can now view images on Google Earth.

But that may be just the beginning. Eventually, the project aims to offer real-time "weather" forecasting, as well as high-resolution 3-D maps of the lunar and Martian surfaces. Web surfers would also be able to track the International Space Station or the space shuttle in real-time.

This isn't the first time NASA and Google combined forces towards a common goal. Last year, Google agreed to develop a new campus at Ames, adjacent to Moffett Field.

FMI: www.nasa.gov, www.google.com