NASA Helps 'Angry Birds Space' Go Deeper Into The Final Frontier

NASA

After a couple of years and hundreds of millions of downloads, the space-based struggle between birds and pigs moves beyond the International Space Station and Mars, and deeper into the final frontier. The latest update from Rovio Entertainment sends Angry Birds Space into NASA’s next target for future human exploration – asteroids!

“Beak Impact” takes flight Thursday. It is a new astronomical struggle that blends the excitement of the world’s most popular mobile gaming application with the science, technology, and information surrounding the agency’s future missions into deep space.

“The collaboration with Rovio and Angry Birds Space is an extraordinary opportunity to reach millions of gamers and use the fictional universe to point players to real information about asteroids, why NASA studies them and how they fit into our exploration path to Mars,” said David Weaver, associate administrator for the Office of Communications at Headquarters in Washington. “It is a great opportunity to educate, inform, and even inspire players about space exploration, all while playing one of the most popular interactive games ever created.”

The agency has embarked on an important mission to detect, track, and characterize potentially hazardous asteroids that could threaten our home planet. And a part of NASA’s effort to send humans to Mars is to capture and explore an asteroid. Hidden in the various levels of “Beak Impact” are direct links to NASA information about the spacecraft and missions that will tell us more about these celestial bodies.

In a blog posted on Rovio’s website, NASA’s Lindley Johnson, Near Earth Observations programs executive, writes about the critical need to detect and better understand possible threats to our home planet!

“In addition to the work we’re already doing to track asteroid threats to Earth, NASA’s Asteroid Initiative is helping identify asteroids we could catch with a robotic spacecraft, or larger asteroids from which we could pluck a large boulder. We’ll move that asteroid mass to a stable orbit around the moon, where astronauts can get to it in the next decade. This will help us prove new techniques to go farther into space than ever before, while showing we can protect Earth from threats we identify.”

“We’re very happy to have collaborated again with NASA’s experts to celebrate the two year anniversary of Angry Birds Space by releasing a brand new update called Beak Impact. Our partnership has blended entertainment and education, which has been enjoyed by millions of people worldwide. It really has been a fun and unique way of showing just how fascinating NASA’s scientific missions are,” says Marja Konttinen, Marketing Director for Angry Birds Space at Rovio Entertainment Ltd.

If you’ve played Angry Birds Space, then you already know about the Mighty Eagle. It’s a way to advance the game if you get stuck on any one level. A surprise in “Beak Impact” is the addition of the Mighty Buzzard! If he looks familiar, it’s because the character is based on Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin. “With the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission approaching, we were more than honored to give our own special tribute to legendary astronaut Buzz Aldrin. He now has his very own bird in the game,” added Konttinen.