NASA, Cisco join in environmental project

WASHINGTON, March 3 (UPI) -- Cisco Inc. and the U.S. space agency plan to jointly develop an online collaborative global monitoring environmental platform.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Cisco say they will work together on the platform called the "Planetary Skin" that will capture, collect, analyze and report data from satellite, airborne, sea- and land-based sensors on environmental conditions around the world.

Under the terms of a Space Act Agreement, the data will be made available to the general public, governments and businesses to measure, report and verify environmental data in near real-time to help detect and adapt to global climate change, the space agency said.

"In the past 50 years, NASA's expertise has been applied to solving humanity's challenges, including playing a part in discovering global climate change," said S. Pete Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center. "The NASA-Cisco partnership brings together two world-class organizations that are well equipped with the technologies and skills to develop and prototype the Planetary Skin infrastructure."

NASA said it will provide continuous global observations of Earth using a constellation of spacecraft, as well as airborne and ground observations. Cisco said it will bring its experience and expertise in networking technologies and advanced innovation to the project.