Google and NASA sign partnership agreement

NASA Ames Research Center and Google today announced completion of a "Space Act Agreement" first announced by Google CEO Eric Schmidt in September 2005 (as reported on John Battelle's Searchblog: Link). The search giant and the government space agency will team up on an array of projects from "large-scale data management and massively distributed computing, to human-computer interfaces." Snip from the announcement:

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.

Link to news release at NASA.gov. Recently: Google Patent Search launches.