ISS becomes first `off planet` addition to Google Maps

New Delhi: The International Space Station (ISS) has become the first off planet addition to Google Maps.

Google said that it hopes and aims to inspire the people to further see the science and engineering involved in space exploration.

As per a report in BBC, astronauts helped capture the photos of insides of the space station modules and also helped to capture the views down the Earth.

This is the first time when annotations like pop-up text descriptions have appeared on the Maps platform.

The report further mentions that this is not the first time 360-degree imagery has been captured beyond Earth.

In 2015, the European Space Agency published its own interactive tour of the ISS. And last year Nasa repurposed images captured by its Pathfinder mission to Mars to create clips suitable for virtual reality headsets.

However, one of the benefits of Google's technology is that it should give members of the public an improved sense of freedom of movement and a greater choice of viewpoints than had been possible before.