"NASA is excited to collaborate with Microsoft to share its portfolio of planetary images with students and lifelong learners," said S. Pete Worden, director of , in a statement. "This is a compelling astronomical resource and will help inspire our next generation of astronomers."

just a little more than a year ago that it had been amassing imagery from the world's best ground and space-based telescopes -- including the and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey -- to create a cohesive view of the universe. The project is designed to let people use their computers to pan across the night sky or zoom in on a particular star or nebula. They can focus in on the or Europa, one of the .

The WorldWide Telescope project also allows users to call up related data and information, take guided tours of the universe or even create their own tours for others to launch.

As part of this partnership between NASA and Microsoft, the Ames Research Center is expected to process and host more than 100 terabytes, or 20,000 DVDs worth, of data. That information is slated to be incorporated into the WorldWide Telescope later this year.

Ames, in Sunnyvale, Calif., also is developing a suite of planetary data processing tools to help integrate NASA's data into Microsoft's system.