When astronauts walk on the moon, they will serve as eyes, hands and interpreters’s boots on the ground supporting the wider teams of scientists on earth. NASA takes advantage of virtual reality to provide high fidelity and profitable support to prepare crew members, flight control teams and scientific teams for a return to the moon thanks to its Artemis campaign.
THE Artemis III geology teamDirected by the principal researcher, Dr. Brett Denevi, of the applied physics laboratory of Johns Hopkins University in Laurel, Maryland, participated in a mini-Surface Artemis III mini-surface in Houston in the fall in the fall in the fall of NASA, the SIM teams and the flight directors and the controls of the Mission Control to exploit sciences of science and the directors of science and flight directors of mission flights Control to Punsting Science-Focation-Focation-Focation The teams communicate with each other and astronauts.
“There are two collision worlds,” said Dr. Matthew Miller, co-directed for the simulation and exploration engineer, Amentim / Jetssii contract with NASA. “There is the operational world and the scientific world, and they become one.”
The training of the NASA mission can include tests on the ground covering the areas of navigation and communication to the physical and psychological workloads of the astronaut. Many of these tests takes place in distant places And may require up to a year to plan and the large teams to execute. Virtual reality can provide an additional option for training that can be planned and executed more quickly to respond to requests for preparation to land on the Moon in an environment where time, budgets and travel resources are limited.
BRI Sparks
NASA co-directed for the simulation and additional activity of the reality team extended to Johnson.
Tests on the ground will not disappear. Nothing can fully replace the experience that crew members acquire by being in an environment that put literal rocks in their hands and the physical challenges that accompany moon moons, but VR has competitive advantages.
The virtual environment used in the mini-SIM of Artemis III VR has been built using real lunar surface data of one of the Artemis III candidate regions. This allowed the scientific team to focus on the scientific objectives of Artemis III and the planning of crossings directly applicable to the Moon. Eddie Paddock, Engineering VR Technical Discipline Discipline at NASA Johnson, and her team used NASA data Lunar recognition orbiter And the position and speed of the planet over time to develop a virtual software representation of a site in the Nobile Rim 1 region near the southern pole of the moon. Two stand-in crew members made Moonwalk are going through virtual reality in the immersive technology laboratory prototype in Johnson, and virtual video camera views mounted on costume, virtual hand camera imaging and audio in another place where flight controllers and scientific support teams have simulated ground communications.
Stands of the crew were immersed in the lunar environment and were then able to share the experience with scientific and flight control teams. This rapid and direct feedback could be essential to scientific and flight control teams while working to build coherent teams despite very different approaches to their work.
The flight operations team and the scientific team learn to work together and speak a shared language. The two teams are essential parts of all mission operations. The flight control team focuses on maintaining team safety and vehicles and minimizing risks as much as possible. The scientific team, as Miller explains, has “a relentless plate” for as much science as possible. Training sessions such as this simulation allow teams to improve their relationships and processes.
Denevi described the flight control team as a “well -oiled machine” and praised their dedication to doing things properly for the scientific team. Many members of the flight control team participated in Training in the field and in class To learn more about geology and better understand the scientific objectives for Artemis.
“They have invested a lot of their own efforts to understand the scientific history and scientific objectives, and the scientific team really appreciates this and wants to make sure they also learn to work in the best possible way to support the flight control team, as there is a lot to learn,” said Denevi. “It is a joy to share science with them and to make them excite to help us do everything.”
This simulation, said Sparks, was only the beginning of the way in which virtual reality could supplement training opportunities for Artemis Science. In the future, the use of mixed reality could help to pass the experience to the higher level, allowing the members of the crew to be completely immersed in the virtual environment while interacting with real objects that they can hold in their hands. Now that the Nobile Rim 1 landing site is built in VR, it can continue to be improved and used for crew training, which, according to Sparks, cannot be done with land on the ground.
While “virtual” was part of the title of this exercise, its applications are very real.
“We discover a lot of things that people probably had in the back of their heads as something we have to face in the future,” said Miller. “But guess what?” The future is now. It’s now.