NASA partnered with Rovio for Angry Birds Space. The collaboration connected the 2012 game’s outer-space setting with NASA’s real spacecraft, astronauts, and educational outreach.
For the game’s promotion, NASA astronaut Donald Pettit demonstrated Angry Birds Space aboard the International Space Station. The video helped explain how motion behaves in microgravity and highlighted the game’s new physics, in which birds travel around planetoids affected by gravitational fields.
NASA described the partnership as a way to share excitement about space, educate the Angry Birds community, and create interactive public experiences. The game also included hidden references to NASA missions and rovers, including Sojourner and Phoenix.
Angry Birds Space launched worldwide on March 22, 2012. It was not a NASA-developed game: Rovio developed and published it. Rovio also had separate commercial partnerships, including one with Samsung, which is why NASA and Samsung are occasionally confused in questions about the launch.