NASA has announced it is teaming up with Google, to strengthen its space research by using the internet search engine's huge storage and server power.
The Space Agreement Act, signed on 18 December, will put "the most useful of Nasa's information on the internet".
The organisations have divulged little about the exact nature of the agreement, though it is understood that under the deal, scientists from both institutions will work together to solve complex computational problems.
The two organisations have also signed an agreement for the search engine giant to build its own one million-square-foot facility within the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field in California.
It is believed that Google already has 13 data centers across the world with more than 10,000 standard Linux servers supporting its search engine operations.