Take a tour of the Kennedy Space Center, courtesy of Google Street View

It’s a very spacey weekend here at VentureBeat. We’ve got a webcast for the Mars landing coming up tomorrow, and today, we bring you a NASA-enabled, Google-powered tour of the Kennedy Space Center, the site of many a historic space mission.

The space center has been opened up virtually to the eyes of millions via the web — Google Maps’ Street View, to be specific — and you can now zoom, drag, and click your way through some pretty fascinating parts of the facility. You’ll see launch pads, control rooms, engines, and even spacecraft themselves.

The gallery has been put together to celebrate the center’s fiftieth anniversary, and it’s Google’s largest special Street View project to date, pulling together more than 6,000 panoramic images.

Here’s a video about the project:

“NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida has been the launch point for a generation of space technology and exploration,” Street View product manager Ryan Falor writes on the company blog.

“Countless enthusiasts (including this one) grew up longing to see a space shuttle up close and walk in the paths of astronauts. Today, a collaboration between NASA and Street View is enabling people around the world to take a trip to the doorway to outer space, and see Kennedy as it transitions into a multipurpose launch complex for the next 50 years of space innovation.”

Here’s a sneak peek — but really, for the full effect, we highly recommend checking out the gallery for yourself (and pulling any young ones you may have around into the experience, as well):

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