In celebration of the Kennedy Space Center’s 50th birthday, Google Maps has teamed up with NASA to give curious children, enthusiasts, and space lovers alike, a virtual trip down the launch pad of space exploration. Compiled of 6,000 panoramic views of the facilities, the Street View of the Kennedy Space Center is the largest special collection of Street View imagery to date.

Following Apple’s Google’s leap into 3D mapping technologies, Amazon has acquired a 3D mapping startup of its own. The online retail giant today sealed a deal to purchase UpNext in a move that could signal the company’s intentions to bring 3D maps to its Kindle Fire slate without any assistance from Google.

Google Maps for Android received an update today to add a few more features to an already amazing app. In today’s release, users will be treated to indoor walking directions, nearby offers, and 360° panoramas of the insides of participating restaurants and stores. Unfortunately, if you live outside of the U.S., most of these features will be unavailable.

You can add another name to the list of companies dropping Google Maps in favor of OpenStreetMap. When Wikipedia announced its new app for iOS today, they also announced that they would be using OpenStreetMap exclusively for the nearby view in both their iOS and Android mobile apps. Wikipedia feels this change will be a better fit for their goal of making knowledge available in a free and open manner to everyone.

This also means we no longer have to use proprietary Google APIs in our code, which helps it run on the millions of cheap Android handsets that are purely open source and do not have the proprietary Google applications.

Google Maps was updated today and yes, it’s still in beta. Kidding aside, it’s really just a minor update, but anyone on Ice Cream Sandwich will appreciate it. Gone are those three tiny launcher dots and list style menu. You’ll now be able to enjoy a larger built-in menu with a grid format and recognizable icons. This should make it a lot easier to see exactly what options you want to access while driving stopped. They might as well take advantage of the space now that handsets are getting much, much larger.