11 Android is Powerful Enough for NASA To test their sensors in the International Space Station, NASA sent two Nexus S handsets running Android Gingerbread into space.” Android is a very important feature for our team," said Mark Micire , a software engineer in the Intelligent Robotics Group. “The availability of the Android source code allows us to customize the smartphone to be used as a compact, low-cost, low-power computer, rather than just as a phone. And because the platform is open-source, we anticipate that the public will be able to develop Android software that can be used in our experiments.”