Rovio and NASA's Angry Birds Space started with one innocent tweet

On March 22, famous Finnish game maker Rovio looks to flip your idea of what Angry Birds is on its head. Angry Birds Space is due out for nearly everything then, and the developer couldn't have done it without the super smart folks at NASA. But how did it all get started, anyway? Federal Computer Week (FCW) reports that it all started on Twitter. Go figure.

Really though, only in 2011 would a game project as ambitious as this start with a tweet. NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs told FCW that the organization's collaboration with Rovio started a year ago when he noticed tweets mentioning NASA and Angry Birds, suggesting that smartphones today pack more punch than the NASA computers of old.

"Hey, RovioMobile, our computers are a bit better than they were in '69. We might be able to help you launch birds if you can find a pig in space," Jacobs tweeted to Rovio's Twitter account in March 2011. "It started with a tweet," Jacobs said. "It sparked a lot of light bulbs going off in people's minds."

From that casual tweet, Rovio and NASA bounced ideas off of each other, and eventually signed a "Space Act Agreement," a formality the organization uses to officiate collaborations with private companies. While the first fruit of the agreement was a single space-themed level in a 2011 Angry Birds content pack, now the idea has come full circle. Hopefully, for NASA's sake, Angry Birds Space will teach players a thing or two about zero gravity.

Are you psyched for Angry Birds Space? Are you surprised at all by the game's origins? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.