NASA Explores Virtual Reality Applications
Even with more and more private enterprise engaging in space exploration, the cost of our next manned voyages beyond Earth’s orbit are bound to be, to forgive a pun, astronomical. Obviously exploring the world beyond our own is costly, not to mention dangerous. But there are ways for NASA to mitigate against the costs and risks associated with space exploration, and in many of these ways VR has been essential.
It should come as no surprise that NASA has been using virtual reality for years to train astronauts on Earth for upcoming missions and the Johnson Space Center in Houston is home to the Virtual Reality Lab where astronauts can plan future trips inside and outside of the International Space Station.
As anyone who has been in a virtual reality arcade and played any number of games set in space can imagine, VR can help prepare an astronaut for a space walk or train someone to drive a rover on Mars. Training is of course a major area of focus for virtual reality experiences, but there’s another area of VR interest within NASA that is just as interesting.
At NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, six multidisciplinary pilot projects are underway, each aiming to apply virtual reality in ways that NASA can benefit from. While VR has been used for training for years, recent substantial developments in hardware are allowing the team at Goddard to push what the technology can do for scientific and engineering applications.
The six projects, being built by a team which includes students from the University of Maryland and Bowie State University include a collaborative virtual reality experience to allow users to design, assemble and interact with spacecraft; a three dimensional simulation of the thermal-vacuum chamber at Goddard to help engineers determine if all a spacecraft’s components can fit inside; and a virtual reality environment that will allow users to visit and explore Earth’s protective magnetosphere, which is currently difficult to interpret.
One of the key realizations that the team at Goddard has come to is that the collaborative capability of virtual reality, which allows engineers working hundreds of miles apart in different facilities to work together seamlessly in construction and design, can save NASA both time and money. It’s the ability for these teams to work together, real time within a shared virtual environment, that will allow the engineers to discover problems earlier, which streamlines the production process.
While the astronaut training that virtual reality has offered NASA has no doubt proven vital to the organization’s mission, it’s sometimes hard to remember that everyday efficiency can be just as important to how humanity ultimately moves into the final frontier.