Mountain View, California — In its quest to pixelate every corner of the world, as it recently released panoramic images of Antarctica and oceans around the world, and now a recent collaborative project between Google and NASA allows space enthusiasts around the world to take a trip to the doorway to outer space via its Street View and see Kennedy Space Center as it transitions into a multipurpose launch complex for the next 50 years of space innovation.
Honoring the Kennedy Space Center’s 50th anniversary, the Google Maps team has just released some pretty cool and its largest street view collection to date: some 6,000 panoramic images of the Kennedy Space Center.
Describing the enthralling experience, “This venue is our largest special collection of Street View imagery to date, totaling 6,000 panoramic views of the facilities, and expanding our mission to document the world’s most amazing places,” explained Google exec Ryan Falor.
You can now take a Street View walk through rooms you would never have access to without some serious security clearance. The immersive experience lets you use your browser to tour the inside of NASA’s Florida facility, which has served as the launch area for some of humanity’s most important missions into space.
In fact, these captivating images display many of Kennedy’s historic sites, including the enormous Vehicle Assembly Building, the dizzying top of the Space Shuttle launch tower, inside Launch Firing Room #4, and a host of other locations around the sprawling space complex.
“We are pleased to collaborate with Google on the new Street View project, which offers the public a behind-the-scenes look at the Kennedy Space Center’s unique facilities that launched humans to the moon and space shuttles to low Earth orbit,” NASA’s Lisa Malone said in a statement. “Viewers also will get a peek inside areas where flight hardware was processed, including elements of the International Space Station, and planetary and scientific payloads.”
Among the images that you can now explore online are the space shuttle launch pad, Vehicle Assembly Building and Launch Firing Room #4. Besides offering a close-up view of the launch pads and control rooms, the panoramic images also reveal new looks at the space shuttles Atlantis and Endeavour.
Commence your journey at the Apollo 14 Command Module, and then swing by Endeavour while you are there. Gaze down from the top of the enormous launch pad, peer up at the towering ceiling of the Vehicle Assembly Building (taller than the Statue of Liberty) and get up close to one of the space shuttle’s main engines, which is powerful enough to generate 400,000 lbs of thrust.
Among other things, there are some nifty details to be spotted, too. I is possible to walk underneath the shuttle itself, and look up to see the thousands of ceramic tiles that protected the craft’s underbelly from the huge temperatures of re-entry; the rest of the shuttle is looking a bit shabby, though we cannot really blame it considering its been around the world the equivalent of 200 times.
“Google Maps in association with NASA is empowering people around the world to take a trip to the doorway to outer space… From these vantage points, anyone can live out his or her childhood dream of becoming an astronaut,” said Falor.
However, embarking on the virtual NASA tour, users have several options. You can dive deep into the full Google Maps version of the experience, where the familiar tiny, yellow Street View icon is transfigured into an astronaut (it even goes into a video game style leaping pose when you move it around the map). The other option is to go directly to the gallery view of the tour, which provides detailed background information on each image, making the virtual tour a more educational experience.
Furthermore, to give users a quick look at just how in-depth the experience is Google has posted a video (below) that exhibits some of the highlights of the virtual tour. With so much new NASA data and imagery available, this latest addition to Street View shapes up to be a space geek’s dream come true. Falor, who early on had a special interest in making the NASA partnership a reality, said, “We would like to thank NASA for making this project possible and giving all of us the chance to digitally walk in the shoes of all of the pioneering astronauts, scientists, engineers and technicians that made our space dreams possible.”
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