Google's Space-Exploration Vision: From Virtual 3-D Travel to the "People's Telescope"

One of the early trends of the 21st Century is the sense that science and space exploration and its expression in film, video, news and events will dominate popular culture as the Internet has during the past decade.

Leading this cultural shift is Google. The search-giant has announced several major initiatives with NASA that have positioned the company as the Space Age leader in information-delivery.

One of Google's first projects was to partner with NASA's Ames Research Center to produce high-resolution 3D maps of and the Moon in the same detail as Google Earth. Users will experience a virtual flight over the surface of the Moon or through the canyons of Mars.

The collaboration will also seek to make NASA data available on the internet, including live weather maps and forecasts, plus real-time tracking of the International Space Station and shuttle. Google will also assist NASA in managing the vast amounts of information held across the agency’s network of computers.

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.

Google has struck a partnership with scientists building a huge sky-scanning telescope, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), on a mountaintop in Chile, with hopes of helping the public with a "people's telescope" to provide access to real-time digital footage of asteroids, supernovas and distant galaxies. Officials say the telescope will open "a movie-like window" on nearby asteroids and far-off exploding stars, and help explore the mysterious "dark energy" believed to fuel the universe's expansion.

Officials say the telescope will open "a movie-like window" on nearby asteroids and far-off exploding stars, and help explore the mysterious "dark energy" believed to fuel the universe's expansion.

It is assumed the company that already offers detailed online maps of the Earth, the Moon and will help analyze massive amounts of data - up to 30 terabytes a night - generated by the telescope.

It will be fitted with a three billion pixel digital camera capable of detecting so-called near-Earth asteroids as small as 100 yards wide.

The telescope, which can view a chunk of sky seven times the width of the Full Moon at any one time, is also expected to spot exploding supernovae and new dwarf planets, or Kuiper Belt objects, beyond Pluto. It will also check billions of galaxies for the effects of those invisible forces dark matter and dark energy.

Scheduled to begin operations in 2013, the 8.4-meter telescope will survey the entire visible sky every week investigating Dark Matter and Dark Energy and opening a movie-like window on fast-changing objects such as exploding supernovae, near-Earth asteroids and distant Kuiper Belt Objects beyond Pluto.

More immediately, Google Earth is launching a new feature called Sky, a "virtual telescope" that will allow millions of Internet users to become full-fledged stargazers. Supernovas and the most remote, ancient galaxies are now just a mouse click away through Sky in Google Earth.

The old Google Earth gave Internet users an “astronaut's view” that can zoom in all the way to street level. Google says the new service also provides a reversed outlook that will let us look out into space in the opposite direction—giving user’s an “astronomer’s view”, as well. The hope is to turn millions of Internet users into stargazers by giving them a fun ‘playground’ for discovering not just our earth, but the entire universe.

"Never before has a roadmap of the entire sky been made so readily available," said Dr. Carol Christian an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, who co-led the institutes's Sky team.

"Sky in Google Earth will foster and initiate new understanding of the universe by bringing it to everyone's home computer."

"You have seen the Hubble images of objects such as the Eagle Nebula, the so-called pillars of creation," said Christian. "With Sky in Google Earth you can see where the objects are located in space, including the constellations in which they reside. Then you can discover other cool objects in nearby regions of the sky. And you don't have to know anything about astronomy to use the program."

Similar to Google Earth, Sky will enable users to float and zoom in on over 100 million individual stars and 200 million galaxies. Users will view the sky as seen from earth.

The backyard astronomy layer lets users click through stars, galaxies and nebulae visible to the eye, binoculars and small telescopes. Users can also delve into deeper layers, which will show the life of a star, constellations, and high-rez images provided by the Hubble Space Telescope along with a “users guide to galaxies”.

The imagery was compiled from numerous third parties including the Digital Sky Survey Consortium, the United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Center and the Anglo-Australian Observatory. The imagery will be updated over time as new visual discoveries come to light.

"We're excited to provide users with rich astronomical imagery and enhanced content that enables them to both learn about what they're seeing and tell their own stories," said Google Product Manager Lior Ron in a statement.

"By working with some of the industry's leading experts, we've been able to transform Google Earth into a virtual telescope."

Google Earth soon became a hit after launching in June 2005 to combine its search service with satellite imagery, maps and 3D building to display the world’s geographical information. According to Google, over 250 million people have already downloaded it.

The Sky service will soon be available on all Google Earth domains, in 13 languages. Users will need to download the newest version of Google Earth, which can be found at www.earth.google.com

It’s hard not to hate Google sometimes. It’s easy to get jealous of the company’s unbridled success—not to mention how their employees get free gourmet meals, while the rest of us are eating 3 day old leftovers. But when something like “Sky” comes along—you just have to hand it to them—they come up with some pretty cool ideas. Rock on, Google. Rock on.

On Thursday, Jan. 17, the chairman and chief executive officer of Google, Eric Schmidt, will discuss the benefits of technology, innovation and space exploration. NASA television will broadcast the event live at: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

Posted by Casey Kazan with Rebecca Sato.

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Related Galaxy posts:

Microsoft vs Google -The Virtual Telescope
Google & the People's Telescope
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Google “Sky”—New Virtual Telescope Using NASA Hubble Images Plans to Turn Millions into Stargazers
MIT Asks: How Would Extraterrestrial Astronomers Study Earth?
 

Comments

[MS Question Generator 2.3]

Nice read, but isn't the last part of the article about Google Sky which _as we all know_ already is available for quite some time?

[anoniumimus IX]

some ppl don't know about it.

poor ppl they r.

[Daniel Appleton]

The " Democritization of space ". For people who don't have ready access to a telescope or people who live in areas of heavy light -pollution, this can be a " God -send " !

You can get almost everything else on the Internet, why not access to the stars ?

[Erik S]

Unfortunately acess to light pollution free zones is getting more and more difficult. This is one thing I miss moving from the country into the city. However the key here is to foster a"life forms's" imagination and let them browse the stars. Whther it is outside or in front of a computer monitor is inconsequential. All of the Hubble images are computer images, so you just can't go down to the local Wally World and buy you a Tesco and expect the be the next Edwin Hubble. If it makes education easier I'm all for it.

[Darnell Clayton]

Same here. Although I think its ingenious how Google is cementing itself for the next 500 years while its competitors only think about "the next dollar."

500 years from now--Google dominates Martian searches.

[dillon quarty]

finally ive been waiting for google to do this. i didnt really like google sky cuz i thought you were going to move 3-d through the stars and go as far as our teliscopes and space cameras its about time google

[Rafael Lage de Almeida]

You have the tech of Google Earth.
Nasa losse resources because people don't show interest.

The academic community, so loves.
Cause' all academic communit like of the game of debate. Do you khow part of the "metiee".

A European kid in the astronomy museum, give a little push for a academic paper.

This software will bring all the popularity for you.

I didn't have more paccience, see the international communit say that NASA has a weak research program.

Sorry, but I have to say tha many people already die for NASA (they knonw more than each other than each could happend. This is the difference, the efforts of this agency for a better world, to discover new boundaries and etc....

I am of vacation to study. I didn't has the habit to wrote commentaeries.

Please at least one time, do like others nations do; bring the public opinion for you.

I am from Brazil but I have a lot of proud of you(Nasa, and now Google).

God blass Us