Google has agreed to lease a large airfield from Nasa to research and develop space exploration technologies.
Planetary Ventures, an offshoot of Google, has agreed to the 60-year lease of Moffett Airfield, located near the technology giant's Silicon Valley headquarters. The site had previously been used by Google executives as a landing and storage area for their private jets, but its use is now being extended.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The 60-year lease is expected to provide the space agency with at least $1.16bn and will save them $6.3m a year in operating costs. Google has also committed to spending at least $200m on upgrading the facilities, including Hanger One, a gigantic and iconic Silicon Valley landmark (above).
Nasa says the sale is part of its mission to reduce costs and get rid of surplus property. "As Nasa expands its presence in space, we are making strides to reduce our footprint here on Earth," said Nasa administrator Charles Bolden.
"We want to invest taxpayer resources in scientific discovery, technology development and space exploration – not in maintaining infrastructure we no longer need."
Little is known about the company Planetary Ventures, which has previously been described as a shell organisation for real estate deals, but the BBC suggests that "the name hints at something more".
Google has not officially announced any plans to venture in to space, but the company's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have a widely reported interest in space and aviation.
The company has offered a $20m prize to any private mission that is able to "land a robot on the moon, travel 500 meters and send back images," before the end of 2015, according to the Financial Times.
-
Political cartoons for November 27Cartoons Thursday's political cartoons include giving thanks, speaking American, and more
-
We Did OK, Kid: Anthony Hopkins’ candid memoir is a ‘page-turner’The Week Recommends The 87-year-old recounts his journey from ‘hopeless’ student to Oscar-winning actor
-
The Mushroom Tapes: a compelling deep dive into the trial that gripped AustraliaThe Week Recommends Acclaimed authors team up for a ‘sensitive and insightful’ examination of what led a seemingly ordinary woman to poison four people
-
Has Google burst the Nvidia bubble?Today’s Big Question The world’s most valuable company faces a challenge from Google, as companies eye up ‘more specialised’ and ‘less power-hungry’ alternatives
-
How the online world relies on AWS cloud serversThe Explainer Chaos caused by Monday’s online outage shows that ‘when AWS sneezes, half the internet catches the flu’
-
Is the UK government getting too close to Big Tech?Today’s Big Question US-UK tech pact, supported by Nvidia and OpenAI, is part of Silicon Valley drive to ‘lock in’ American AI with US allies
-
Google: A monopoly past its prime?Feature Google’s antitrust case ends with a slap on the wrist as courts struggle to keep up with the tech industry’s rapid changes
-
South Korea's divide over allowing Google MapsTalking Points The country is one of few modern democracies where the app doesn't work
-
Google avoids the worst in antitrust rulingSpeed Read A federal judge rejected the government's request to break up Google
-
Is AI killing the internet?Talking Point AI-powered browsers and search engines are threatening the death of the open web
-
Unreal: A quantum leap in AI videoFeature Google's new Veo 3 is making it harder to distinguish between real videos and AI-generated ones
