When thinking about VR (Virtual Reality) a lot of things come to mind – to me, videogames are the first, followed by other, more scientific, applications. What I have recently discovered, instead, is that NASA has been quite active in this field (as in many others), with some projects truly amazing.
That astronauts have used virtual reality as a training tool, it’s nothing new. Actually, researchers and scientists at Dartmouth, Harvard, and at a few other institutions, have been working on an initiative known as the Virtual Space Station since a while.
(Credit:NASA)
Moreover, devices such as VR googles and simulators are increasingly common, while sophisticated programmes are being developed to soothe homesick spacenauts.
And in case you practising whilst wearing a spacesuit, this is the one you may want to consider, the new NDX-1.
This technological wonder, if you have to believe its creators, will be the first fully-pressurized spacesuit to give astronauts the full space-on-Earth experience. Waiting for a second-skin spacesuit experience like the one currently studied at the MIT, of course.
(Credit:MIT)
What’s next?
Something even better.
NASA is going to the next step – i.e. it will put all these things together, with the aim of fully training astronauts in a space-like conditions whilst still on Earth.
“We’re going to test [the NDX-1] suit in a harness and rig system that can replicate Mars’ and the Moon’s gravity,” Pablo de Leon, who leads the project, told Motherboard. “The astronaut will be feeling like he’s walking on Mars inside of the helmet, and he’ll be inside a pressurized suit. He’ll see Mars and he’ll feel, when he moves, the gravity of Mars.”
In a new integrated setting at the NASA Johnson Space Center, sometime next year, astronauts will put on their fancy spacesuits, operate in a low gravity simulator and wear their Oculus Rift virtual reality goggles that will make them believe they are on a alien soil. Wow!