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Ed Lu, who flew on two Shuttle flights and spent 6 months on the International Space Station after the Columbia disaster, will be moving to balmy California to start his next mission at Google.

Google, who has brought exploration to our everyday lives, signed an agreement to build their GooglePlex at NASA Ames, and recently released GoogleSky (with high-res GoogleMoon and Mars to follow), now has their own in-house astronaut.

Lu, who has a doctorate in astrophysics from Stanford University and a strong background in the academic research environment, will have a lot to offer to GoogleSky as well as to GoogleScholar and GoogleBooks.  He may also play a role in the NASA-Google Space Act Agreement projects, announced in December 2006.

Apollo Astronaut Rusty Schweickart, Ed Lu, and colleagues have also made news lately for their efforts to mitigate the dangers of an asteroid hitting the Earth (read the Wired article here). Lu even has an article published in Nature on his idea for a " Gravity Tractor" mission that could gently pull an asteroid off course over time. The group gets extra points for naming their B612 Foundation after the asteroid home of the Little Prince in Antoine de Saint-Exupery's children's story The Little Prince.

The NASA press release from Aug 10th states that Lu was leaving NASA to accept a position in the private sector. (A statement in the release that Lu was the first American to launch and land on a Soyuz, overlooked Dennis Tito, the first private spaceflight participant who paid the Russians $20 million dollars to travel to the International Space Station in April of 2001.)

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