If, like me, you're totally obsessed with all of the coverage of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing and walk on the moon, you're going to like Jason Kottke's latest project.

If you're not aware of the coverage I'm talking about, first of all check out We Choose The Moon, which is a project put together by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum to follow the Apollo 11 mission from lift-off to landing on the moon. The site contains CG graphics of the main (i.e. most interesting) stages of the trip, and there is full 24 hour a day coverage of the radio communications between mission control, the service and control module, and the lunar lander. Of course, to top it all off, you can follow mission control, the control module, and the lunar lander on Twitter.

I've been following We Choose the Moon all week, and though it's amazing to have coverage of all of the radio communications, I'm spoiled. I want video. Luckily, NASA knew that video coverage of the moon landing was imperative, and the mission was put together with a priority of having video coverage available and broadcast live to the public. Jason Kottke has delved into YouTube and either found or uploaded copies of Walter Cronkite's CBS News broadcasts of both the first ever moon landing, and the first ever moon walk, for a site he's put together called Apollo 11 Live TV Coverage. Kottke states that the site was inspired both by the anniversary of Apollo 11, and by the unfortunate recent passing of legendary news anchorman Walter Cronkite.

The site is set up with a late-60's era television framing YouTube, which Kottke hopes will help to emulate the experience people had 40 years ago of watching the live action on relatively small and low-resolution television screens. It's cleverly coded to show the video coverage at exactly the same times it was originally broadcast 40 years ago - this isn't typical web-based video where you can scrub backwards and forwards; this is appointment television viewing.

Google has added updates imagery to Google Moon allowing you to see high resolution photos of a place you're unlikely ever to visit. Aside from high res pictures, there are also photos, articles, scientific charts, and links to videos from the Apollo moon missions.

There are even Google Street View style 360 degree closeup images of selected locations, and a text search box for finding specific spots on the moon's surface.

Google's had the moon on the brain this week. The company has also announced its sponsoring the Lunar X-PRIZE contest. Teams around the world are competing for a $30 million prize. All they have to do is land a privately funded spacecraft on the moon. Of course, it costs NASA a whole lot more than $30 million to send the shuttle into space and back without even stopping at the moon. So the odds of anyone designing and flying a ship to the moon for less money than $30 million is pretty slim. But hey, the prize would help recoup some of your costs, right?

Google and Nasa officially announced their special Space Act Agreement Monday. Through this new relationship, both companyies and government agency will work on technical problems that face large scale data management and human-computer interfaces. Google and NASA's Ames Research Center's first focus will be to make NASA's information readably available on the internet, namely real time weather tracking, high-res 3D maps of the moon and mars, and real time tracking of the International Space Station. This partnership, which began in September of last year, was a long while coming, but now that it's actually in the works, it's getting a lot of people excited at the possibilities that both organizations bring to the table in the long run.

[Update: Thanks to Jeremy for reminding me that NASA is still a government agency, and hasnt made the switch over to a company as of yet! ]