Cisco lands deal to build climate-change network for NASA

Dubbed 'Planetary Skin,' the network platform will connect a number of sensor and recording units throughout the planet in an effort to gather data for monitoring and tracking changes to the global climate.

The company plans to begin building the system next year with a program called 'Rainforest Skin' which will track both climate change and deforestation in rainforest environments.

Eventually, the company plans to take the system throughout the planet and create a global network of data-collecting systems for the project.

"Mitigating the impacts of climate change is critical to the world's economic and social stability," said Cisco chief executive John Chambers.

"This unique partnership taps the power and innovation of the market and harnesses it for the public good. Cisco is proud to work with NASA on this initiative and hopes others from the public, private and not-for-profit sectors will join us in this exciting endeavor."

Outside of its better known space travel efforts, NASA has long been a major partner and customer for the IT industry.

The agency's research labs house some of the top supercomputing clusters in the world, and more recently the Ames research center leased land and office space to neighbor Google.