Heading to the X Prize Cup

Posted by Brian McClendon, Engineering Director, Google Earth

Heading to the desert to watch rockets launch and jets fly is fun all by itself. Doing it as part of an outdoor space exposition, with multimillion dollar prizes to help accelerate space development, is even better!

I'll be going to the Wirefly X PRIZE Cup in Las Cruces, New Mexico this weekend and it promises to be a blast! It turns out the XPRIZE Cup organizers are using Google Earth to share all kinds of information about space. Models of spacecraft and space stations, locations of launch sites, space centers all over the world, and even the locations of the moon trees (from seeds taken to the moon during Apollo).

Not only that, but we have helped create a 3-D model of the X PRIZE Cup event in Google Earth, or you can watch this video.

If you're coming to Las Cruces, come to the Google booth, where we will demonstrate the Google Earth content in person. Or see it now at this special Google page dedicated to what's happening at the Wirefly X PRIZE Cup.

Space is the final frontier, and many of us here at Google would like to join the adventure. Besides, if these X PRIZE events are successful, we may finally be able to go to space ourselves and take some of our own satellite photos for Google Earth!