Back to the catalog
Spinoff story
Space Mission Planning System Targets Advertising with Precision
A real-world story of NASA technology finding a life beyond the mission.
About this technology
Overview
Most Internet users may not know that every online ad appears after a near-instant auction for that slot. A leading company driving that process got its start planning NASA missions to the Moon and Mars. A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of several funded by NASA Headquarters, developed software to choose the best among some 1,162 possible mission architectures. In 2007, team members founded Boston-based dataxu to adapt the software for commercial purposes, ultimately finding a niche in online ad sales.