Fridaygram: Space Center Street View, quick trip to orbit, Curiosity landing

AUG 03, 2012

By Scott Knaster, Google Developers Blog Editor

As regular Fridaygram readers might recall, Street View isn’t just for streets anymore. Street View Special Collections provide panoramic images of cool locations from Antarctica to World Heritage sites. This week we launched Street View images for Kennedy Space Center as it celebrates its 50th anniversary. With this collection, you can visit the enormous Vehicle Assembly Building without leaving your couch, view a Space Shuttle engine from very close range, and pretend you’re pushing the buttons as you look at Launch Firing Room #4.

In other news involving launches and space stuff, Russia’s space program this week accomplished the feat of docking a cargo ship at the International Space Station less than six hours after it launched from Earth. This technology might be expanded to future Soyuz flights, which include crews. With the fast docking, the crews would be more comfortable (or really, would be uncomfortable for shorter times) and would require fewer supplies before arriving at their destination.

It’s a good thing space is so big, because it’s a busy place. Coming up late Sunday or early Monday, depending on where on Earth you are, the Mars Rover Curiosity is scheduled to make a dramatic landing on the red planet. You can follow along on NASA's site as the landing progresses. Finally, we’ll find out how the Martians feel about our flying saucer landing on their planet.

Each week our Fridaygram presents cool things from Google and elsewhere that you might have missed. Fridaygram items aren't necessarily related to developer topics; they're just interesting to us nerds.