The University of Rhode Island broke ground last week on a state-of-the-art oceanographic command center...When completed in spring 2009, the $15 million, 41,000-square-foot Undersea Exploration Center on URI’s Narragansett Bay Campus will be the nexus for ambitious plans to make URI a world leader in exploration of the ocean floor...

...The majority of the new building will house an expanded Inner Space Center, a NASA-style technology command center that uses a high-definition TV satellite and Internet system to instantly link research teams exploring the floor of the world’s oceans in autonomous underwater vehicles with oceanographic experts at URI and across the nation...

...Ballard said he hopes the Inner Space Center will inspire a new generation of undersea explorers...URI and NOAA plan to link the Inner Space Center to classrooms across Rhode Island and the nation, providing schoolchildren with unprecedented access to science as it happens.