Google and NASA partner up to bring our solar system to life in AR

Google and NASA have partnered to introduce a whole new line of learning tools aimed at bringing multiple interesting experiences to Google users in both website form and via new AR models you can see right from your phone. In total, the partnership brings new 3D models of 60 planets, moons and NASA spacecraft right to Google Search: no apps needed.

The hub for much of the information lives in a Google Arts & Culture site that allows users to explore our solar system planet by planet, seeing each celestial body along with all of their moons. Via the main site, you can see planets in 3D renders and learn quite a bit about all the different parts of our local solar system.

Dig deeper into the Welcome to our Cosmic Backyard, Get Your Spaceship Ready, Destination: Solar System and Start at the Heart sections and you can learn about planets, spacecraft, and the sun while playfully coloring tons of NASA images to your heart’s content. Most of the individual planet sections on the main site also have sub-sites that go deeper into the facts about each. There’s a ton of info, here.

Planets, spaceships and satelites in AR

By far, the most fun you can have with all this is rendering planets, spacecraft, moons and satellites in AR on your phone. While there are interactive 3D models of all of these available on the desktop, there’s nothing quite like allowing Google to render these objects in 3D right in your room. Having the James Webb Space Telescope rendered in 3D sitting on the table is a pretty cool experience.

Just search for planets, moons, comets, spacecraft, satellites and you’ll likely find an AR image of what you want. Google didn’t provide the full list of 3D objects, but I’d recon you can find most of what you are looking for.

For children and adults alike, these Google experiments present a powerful way of presenting information that is sometimes hard to fully grasp. I don’t know about you, but when I try to fathom a planet the size of Jupiter that is full of toxic gas and wild storms, my mind just gets a bit mushy. Most of us have a hard time coming to grips with the size of our own planet, much less the handful “near” us. And that’s to say nothing of the size of our galaxy and the sheer vastness of space that surrounds it on all sides. It can keep you up at night if you think about it all too much.

But this partnership between Google and NASA is a non-anxiety inducing trip through the wild stuff in relative proximity to Earth, and it’s presented in a way that is both attractive and interesting. I know I’ll be dropping a few planets in the living room tonight to show off to the kids, hopefully sparking a bit of conversation around how small we really are in the vast expanse of the universe we inhabit.