Partnerships between brands are nothing new in the auto industry, but this one is both awesome and unexpected: Nissan has announced that it will work with NASAto jointly develop fully-autonomous vehicles by the end of 2015. To the grocery store, and beyond!

The Nissan-NASA partnership kicks off a five-year research program to "advance autonomous vehicle systems and prepare for commercial application of the technology." Engineers from Nissan's Silicon Valley Research Center will join NASA researchers to test a fleet of zero-emissions, self-driving vehicles at the space agency's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field in California.

"The work of NASA and Nissan – with one directed to space and the other directed to earth, is connected by similar challenges," said Carlos Ghosn, president and CEO of Nissan Motor Co. "The partnership will accelerate Nissan's development of safe, secure and reliable autonomous drive technology that we will progressively introduce to consumers beginning in 2016 up to 2020."

What happens in 2020, you ask? Well, that's when Nissan hopes to introduce autonomous cars that "have the ability to navigate in nearly all situations, including the most complex situation, city driving." No word as to whether "introduce" means "offer for sale," but doubtless that is the end goal for Nissan.

NASA, for its part, enters into the agreement with an eye towards putting autonomous car tech to use in outer-space transport of goods, materials, and humans, as well as the remote-controlled rovers the agency uses to explore far-off astronomical bodies.

Maybe, starting in 2020, you'll see NISMO and NASA-edition Nissans sitting side-by-side at the dealership. That'd be pretty cool.

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