NASA Provides Interactive, 3-D Views of the Next Mars Rover to the Public

A charter of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is to educate the public and inspire students. NASA hosts a Web site for the purpose of generating public awareness about the Mars Science Laboratory rover known as Curiosity. The Mars team wanted to add even greater interactivity to let people explore the new rover and to give them a realistic feeling of the rover's scale and testing environment. NASA worked with Microsoft to create an online three-dimensional view of a full-scale model of Curiosity by using Microsoft Photosynth technology and Microsoft Silverlight, the cross-browser plug-in.