Mouse to give way to avatars at NASA

NASA may use online virtual worlds akin to SecondLife to prepare for future space missions, a spokesman for the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said.

Currently the agency runs an interactive museum in the game-like, digital 3D environment where space-enthusiasts can watch video clips and banter with basic artificially intelligent agents to learn about NASA's latest missions.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory spokesman Charles White said, however, that NASA engineers may adopt the avatars used in Second Life for future engineering projects if the agency's experiments in the 3D world proved successful.

"Back in the 1980s we went from drafting tables to computer screens. In another five years we need to move from the mouse to the avatar for engineering," Mr White said.