That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for the Nexus One. That’s right, the two year old Google Nexus One is making its way into space. No, astronauts aren’t taking the phone into space so they can get their Angry Birds Stars Wars on, instead they are basically launching the phone into space as part of the “PhoneSat Program”.

What is this program all about? Basically it is an effort to create small, low-cost and easy-to-build nano-satellites. The program will see the Nexus One put into space in 2013. This isn’t actually so exiting for the Nexus One, in reality. Space is sort of a “been there, done that” frontier for the aging Google/HTC smartphone. In 2010, it was strapped to a rocket and used to record every step of the trip.

Considering how weak the computers were that let us land on the moon, I suppose the Nexus One is more than adequate enough to serve as a nano-satellite. I can already picture aliens arriving and seeing all the junk smartphones floating around our planet…. I wonder what kind of impression that would give. If I were the aliens, I’d pretend I didn’t notice the planet and just keep on my way.

This is a cool plan on NASA’s part and an interesting way to recycle older smartphones, at that. What do you think?

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