NASA's 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.This deal enables Google and Ames to 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," NASA administrator Michael Griffin said."This innovative combination of information technology and space science will make NASA's space exploration work accessible to everyone," Griffin added."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," Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer of Google, said."We're pleased to move forward to collaborate on a variety of technical challenges through the signing of the Space Act Agreement," he added.
