Exploring Space Using Virtual Reality

Collaborating with tech giants including Microsoft, NASA is now able to conquer the universe without needing to leave Earth – and you can come along for the ride

- Libby Plummer

Virtual reality (VR) is bringing space closer to armchair astronauts than ever before. Not only is it opening up the galaxy to those of us that will never make it beyond the Kármán line, it’s also helping astronauts train for the harsh environment of microgravity and scientists for their projects.

In March 2017 a virtual recreation of the International Space Station (ISS) was launched for the Oculus Rift VR headset. Mission:ISS, which was made in collaboration with NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency, is the work of visual effects firm Magnopus, based in Los Angeles. “We started with engineering models from NASA at Johnson Space Center,” Ben Grossmann, VR director of the experience and co-founder of Magnopus, tells All About Space. “Then we scoured the freely available images on NASA’s websites for photo and video references, which our artists used when they added details. It was quite the research project because there’s so much activity on the ISS, and it’s so difficult to ‘take inventory’ regularly and get any confidence that something is where we thought it might be”.

The team made a painstaking effort to get every detail exactly right, interviewing astronauts on whether there was anything missing that they expected to see. “For example, one ISS crew member pointed out to us that there was damage to one of the radiator panels that was cataloged during STS-119 that no one ever seems to acknowledge in recreations, so we got that in there,” explains Grossmann.