Google Signs 40-Year Lease To Establish Huge NASA Campus

Google Inc. on Wednesday announced that it has signed a long-term lease with NASA to develop a new high-technology campus at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.

Under the terms of a 40-year lease agreement, the Internet search giant will secure space for a huge office complex that will be built on a federal government research center near the Internet search leader's Silicon Valley headquarters, and will pay rent for the leasing space.

Google said it will build up to 1.2 million square feet (about 0.11 square kilometers) of offices, research and development space, company housing, and recreation on 42.2 acres (about 0.17 square kilometers) of the former Moffett Field property, for which it will pay an initial rent of 3.66 million U.S. dollars a year to NASA.

The space agency plans to use the money for improvements and maintenance costs at the Ames Research facility.

Google will also build even retail shops and housing for Google employees on the new campus. The search engine giant has added more than 17,000 employees in the last four years to boost its payroll to 19,156 workers.

"We've always had a need for space and we're planning to be in Silicon Valley for many years to come," said Google spokesman Andrew Pederson. "This lease is a key part of that strategy."

Construction of up to 1.2 million square feet of office and research facilities is expected to start in September 2013, following with another phase in 2018. Google expects to start the final phase of the campus construction in 2022. The company didn't estimate how much it would cost to build the new centre.

In all, the NASA campus, which is within a 10-minute drive of Google's headquarters in Mountain View, could accommodate as many as 5,000 workers.

Google's lease is for 40 years, with possible extensions to up to 50 more years. Rent can be increased over time.

"With this new campus, we will establish a new era of expanded collaboration with Google that will further enhance our Silicon Valley connections," said Pete Worden, director of NASA Ames. "This major expansion supports NASA's mission to lead the nation in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research."

NASA and Google’s collaboration is not new rather they have been working together since 2005, when they announced plans to work together on a variety of projects, involving super computing, information technology and nanotechnology.

In December 2006, Google entered into a Space Act Agreement with NASA Ames Research Center, a NASA facility which helps provide research support for the activities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, to handle together a variety of challenging technical problems including large-scale data management, massively distributed computing and human-computer interfaces.