How NASA is Using VR To Make Scientific Discoveries – Explained

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Here on terra firma, the most popular use of Virtual Reality or VR is for gaming and at times for education, as you’d often find reported in VR news. Unlike a traditional television screen, VR allows immersion.

Immersion means the user can look around typically on six different axis – sides, up, down, front, and back. This makes it ideal for space research done by Nasa, training astronauts and is a prime example of using VR in science.

The Early Years

Virtual Reality has been around for a long while. The first optical systems with stereo vision (depth of field created by using both eyes) were developed as far back as 1978. The hardware available at that time was crude at best.

The first commercial VR headset was the Sega VR, released in 1991. In the peak of the VHS era, it made little impact. It is in the last 10 years, to be precise in 2010 when robust computing power for better graphical processing units and digital video made it possible to build the first prototype of Oculus Rift.

Virtual Reality Projects and NASA – The First Step

But the technology used by NASA is far advanced than commercial applications as reported by VR news. NASA has its Virtual Reality Lab in Building No 9 of the Johnson Space Center near Houston, Texas. The full use of NASA is Using VR in Science began to be realized at this nondescript lab.

The founder of the lab was David Homan, who has since retired. Back in the mid-80s, he had already fabricated the first Head Mounted Display Units and was thinking about an application in space exploration. He recruited Brad Bell, another NASA engineer, and they believed that it could be used for high dexterity maneuvers.

Astronauts need to do a lot of assembly and engineering in space. Most of it would include tasks like screwing and bolting down struts and arms. Usually, it is done in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, an enormous swimming pool.Astronauts are submerged inside and use thick gloves to assemble and disassemble parts.

However, VR was not very good at high dexterity maneuvers since the astronauts could not feel weightlessness that the pool offered in VR.

Hubble Repair

NASA is Using VR in Science

Then in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched at the cost of $2.5 billion. In a few short weeks, scientists realized that the most expensive gadget ever built could not focus properly and needed an additional mirror to correct its vision.

To correct the problem, the STS-61 mission was planned for 1993. But there was huge trouble in making the robotic arm that would extend the astronaut from the shuttle work ideally. While one rode piggyback on it, another would operate its travel. The astronauts were not able to communicate clearly without some visualization aid coming to their help.

Homan and Bell put together graphics that replicated the shuttle, the arm, and Hubble. It was meant to give the astronauts a complete picture of their Extra-Vehicular Activity or EVA and train them so that there were no errors.

Each shuttle flight costs about a billion bucks, and there was to be no second chance. If they failed, then the Hubble would be scrapped and become the most expensive space debris orbiting Earth.

It was due to the advanced graphics and HMDs built by Homan that NASA is Using VR in Science realized that the arm was too short and needed to be modified.

Hubble was successfully repaired, and with this, virtual reality projects had established its place in NASA training.

SAFER Program 

The next step for scientists using Virtual Reality at NASA was developing the Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue or SAFER training program.

scientists using Virtual RealityThough astronauts are tethered to the shuttle or ISS during a spacewalk, NASA wanted to train its astronauts to return safely to the vehicle using their backpacks should they float away.

The SAFER units have nitrogen thrusters (24 of them to be exact) to propel the astronaut back. But that is easier said than done since it is hard to maneuver in space and head in a particular direction at just the right speed. If the pace was too much, the astronaut would ram into the side of the spacecraft.

The first astronauts to train using SAFER would later pilot STS-64 in 1994.

What does the training look like? Not at all what you would expect from a state of the art lab. A tall cart is full of something that looks like a very expensive amplifier system for hi-fi and two office chairs into which trainees sit.

There are, of course, the HMDs that has a 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution. There are simulated graphics of various parts of the ISS, and once you strap the HMD on, you are taken away to another world.

Charlotte

The latest invention from the lab is Charlotte, a VR based robot initially built by McDonnell Douglas. The robot allows astronauts to feel what an object actually weighs in space.

It may take a small crane to lift a satellite on Earth, but in space, you can do the same using your little finger.

This also makes it quite dangerous because large objects have a tendency to float away, and the slightest tug causes it to move towards the astronaut at enormous velocity. Charlotte training makes spaceflights much safer and predictable.

What’s Next

Did you know that Virtual Reality Lab uses HTC Vive from 2016!

In recent years scientists using Virtual Reality at NASA have focused on designing the graphics and left the development of HMDs to the private sector.

buy Htc Vive

At NVIDIA’s GTC conference in 2016, NASA engineers disclosed that they were no longer building new headsets but using HTC Vive brought off the shelf. The earliest one was a mere 320 x 240 pixels in resolution. The development of the new HUD was costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it made more sense to buy the latest gear from the commercial market for a few hundred.

This works fine for NASA since the lab has only six full-time engineers, and their time is better utilized. In all between 1991 and 2015, the VRL produced six generations of HMDs.

The software they use is, however, custom-built and called Dynamic Onboard Ubiquitous Graphics or DOUG.

Its attest iteration has an accurate replica of the ISS loaded inside it correct down to the last bolt and rivet. Any change in ISS is immediately reflected back in VRL.

Currently, Microsoft and VRL are developing Project Sidekick, which will allow astronauts to communicate with each other through a device known as HoloLens. It will be the world’s first standalone holographic display unit. It is still in its infancy, but then thinking back to 1985 and Homan’s first HMD who could have imagined VR would have come this far.

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