LXer: NASA embraces Microsoft format -- but adds an open-source twist
 

Published at LXer:

NASA is processing immense sets of images and data from Mars and the moon into a special Microsoft format for viewing in the Redmond company's WorldWide Telescope online program. But the U.S. space agency also plans to publicly release, as open-source software, the tools it's developing to make the conversion. That technological balancing act is among the details revealed in a federal Space Act Agreement establishing the terms of a collaboration announced by NASA and Microsoft earlier this year. The text of the agreement wasn't disclosed at the time, but NASA has now released the documents in response to a request made by TechFlash under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

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