Google founder books space flight

 

Gallery

By Matthew Sparkes

Posted on 12 Jun 2008 at 07:42

Google co-founder Sergey Brin has booked a place on a commercial space flight which could see him orbiting the planet by 2011, according to Space Adventures.

By paying a $5 million deposit he has secured first refusal on the maiden flight by the American company, one of the handful of rivals to Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic.

The flight will be supported by the Russian space agency and will make use of a specially converted Soyuz craft to reach the International Space Station.

"I am a big believer in the exploration and commercial development of the space frontier, and am looking forward to the possibility of going into space," says Brin. "Space Adventures helped open the space frontier to private citizens and thus pave the way for the personal spaceflight industry."

As well as Brin's deal with the commercial company, Space Adventures, Google has recently been working on a number of projects with the US space agency NASA.

The company has added detailed images of Mars and the Moon to its Google Earth application, to enable "every American to experience a virtual flight over the surface of the moon or through the canyons of Mars".

A research and development deal has also been signed which will see engineers from both organisations working together on projects such as massively distributed computing, bio-info-nano convergence and other technologies that may prove useful or profitable both in orbit and on Earth.

Most recently it was announced that Google will be building a new 1.2 million square feet campus at NASA's Ames Research Centre, in order to house thousands of future employees and make collaboration on various projects easier.