NASA astronaut Jessica Meir on how VR space missions can help

As I sit in the window-filled dome of the International Space Station, looking out at the Earth’s curved horizon and then down at the impossible mat of the planet rolling past, it makes me feel like I’m in space. But I’m not. I’m watching the 360 ​​degree VR documentary, Space Explorers, on the Oculus Quest. When he hands over the headset to my child, he is equally fascinated.

VR is not a perfect simulation to be in space. Not for long. But it is also a much more valuable tool than you might think.

Space Explorers is a multiple VR documentary made by Felix & Paul Studios, directed by Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël. The VR production company has already made documentary VR films with Cirque du Soleil, President Barack Obama, and created the award-winning While traveling black. Their collaboration with NASA continues, starting with training programs and continuing with a documentary shot in VR on the ISS.

Felix & Paul plan to take VR outside the ISS this summer on a spacewalk using a specially adapted camera. And after that, all the footage will be used to create an impressive walk-through experience in a tour exhibit that allows visitors to explore a 3D re-creation of the ISS and project 3D 360-degree videos around them. A TV documentary using the same footage is also underway.

But in many ways, the ISS VR experience just feels like the beginning of a greater connection between space and VR. VR can eventually be used to document missions in the distance: the moon or Mars. Or used for telepresence. Or to help astronauts feel more at home while in space.

NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, who appears in the documentary, spoke to me about Zoom about how it was on the ISS and how the filming felt in VR. Felix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphael also shared thoughts on where things are headed.

Another camera in a sea of ​​cameras

“Like astronauts, we’re used to it: we’re always under scrutiny, and we have other cameras on the space station throughout the workday, and we’re almost always recording what we’re doing there,” Meir said in VR filmed in space. . “It really gives us a way to share our experiences, which is so hard to put into words for other people who have not had the experience themselves.”

The 8K VR cameras Felix and Paul used for the ISS Experience are custom Federal Communications Commission and space-certified versions of the Z-Cam V1 Pro, to ensure that thermal and electromagnetic properties meet space and that the lenses do not shatter . The production has two VR cameras on the ISS and uses one for filming at any one time.

Meir felt that it is not so strange to be in the documentary, especially since the ISS is already full of cameras, but the possibilities for VR as a documentary memory are unique: ‘Other astronauts in our office, if they are the ISS experience now see, it feels like we are immediately back at the space station. The first time I put it on, I felt like I was just there, like being in a place you used to live. You recognize everything, and you are transported there. It’s really amazing. ‘

The VR camera on the ISS was quite large and was used to record continuously in certain parts of the space station.

“I was up there for 205 days, and when I arrived at the space station, it was pretty much captured on the ISS experience,” Meir says. Lower-rest material was seen by Felix & Paul via streaming to get an idea of ​​what was shot, but the full files were brought to earth between missions.

“We would just be there to talk to the camera and have suggested material to talk about, but we can really talk about anything we want,” Meir says. ‘For her, it will also function as a memory of space. even if all the footage is not initially used for the VR documentary. ‘It’s really nice now that we have these narratives, even though most of the content will not end up in actual production. This is a wealth of our own journal for the camera. ‘

The footage could very well be used to enhance training for future missions. ‘I think almost every astronaut who has had the experience so far immediately noticed it and said it would be such a powerful tool to practice – because we just can not really copy and practice for all aspects of spaceflight. Without having microgravity, without really having three-dimensional volumetric space, “says Meir.

“There are things everywhere on the real space station,” she continues. “There are cables coming out whatever, and it’s just so different from what our training facility looks like there. We have the feeling of realism in the sense that we can look around you and behind you, I think there is so much that it can offer in respect of astronaut training. ‘

Next: VR Space Walk

The VR documentary has been collecting footage for more than two years, recording more than 200 hours of expeditions 58-62 and SpaceX Crew 1 aboard the ISS.

A modified version of the camera will work outside the space station for a five-day recording later this year, when the camera will be mounted on the ISS’s external Canadarm2 robot arm. “This is going to be the first time that the earth is filmed in ultra-high-definition video in a full 360-degree environment, unhindered by anything,” says Lajeunesse. “And it’s going to be a six-and-a-half hour spacewalk that we’ll be filming with two astronauts from the moment they get out of the station until the moment they come in again.”

VR can not capture the strangeness of zero gravity

Despite the benefits of VR as a documentation and exercise tool, there is one thing it cannot simulate: what weightlessness does to the brain. Despite playing a number of VR games and experiences of ‘zero g’, I still feel gravity outside my headset. Despite training devices on Earth to simulate weightlessness and VR simulations, “it is impossible for us to put into words what it feels like to be weightless all the time,” Meir says of her time on the ISS.

“It takes your brain a long time. I mean, I can tell you if you eat soup with a spoon, it’s very difficult for your brain and for your hand to be trained to realize that I can only hold it. Spoon upside down in space.And then it will not fall off.

“We say when we arrive in space, we are like newborns, and we have to figure out how to drink and how to feed ourselves and how we can go to the bathroom,” says Meir. “You can not just put something down, you always have to remember to put it with Velcro. People in the beginning often put things wrong, or things drift away. There are so many different surfaces where you could have left things combined with the the fact that every square inch is covered with good. “

I’m amazed at the calm, almost ballet-like way astronauts on the ISS can throw food at each other when they eat. Meir says it’s certainly not as effortless as it seems: “Well, I can tell you that skill is learned. You have to train your brain, because when you think about it, when you throw something here [on Earth], like when you throw a baseball, you adapt to gravity. “More describes the movement in space as more like subtle, direct pressure. And sometimes, when you get to where you are going, spatial relationships can change and create a different sensation of where” ground “and” ceiling “are.

“On Earth, our brain uses this directionality all the time for navigation and spatial awareness,” says Meir. “I think my brain has adapted a bit to use different clues for navigation.”

VR as a possible future of space presence

My experience of visiting the ISS via a VR documentary made me wonder if this kind of experience could ever happen in real time, and if it would enable astronauts to be there by telepresence. “This is something that NASA has thought about a lot in the past, especially with regard to telemedicine,” says Meir. “We have a lot of experiments using ultrasound, for example. I was involved with one of those where I had a team of medical doctors and scientists who were all over the planet, and they actually guided me, they did the real-time recording of my ultrasound. while I set it up and can help me get the sin they need. With virtual reality, they can be even more present and maybe even easier. “

VR as a psychological tool

One idea Meir suggests makes me reconsider the role of VR: While watching astronauts in space on headphones, astronauts can use VR to feel at home. “I think virtual reality will also be very valuable for psychological support in the future,” says Meir. “There were some experiments here at NASA to evaluate that it was in terms of long-term missions. There was some VR-type content where you could go on a little trip or a nature trip or choose the environment. in which you go.And they actually took recordings of my mother’s voice, and there were messages nearby that I would find from my mother.Something in this 3D, immersive virtual reality could be even more powerful when we talk about everything the way to Mars, and a sort of three-year mission, something like that can be a very powerful tool for psychological support of astronauts. ‘

Where VR goes next

Felix & Paul Studios started this perennial project that shot VR on the ISS, but the goals thereafter are beyond the earth. “The next step is the return of humanity to the Moon,” says Lajeunesse. “We want to use the engaging power of augmented reality and virtual reality and the immersive media to take hundreds of millions of people with the astronauts at the forefront of the mission to the Moon. And then we want to go to Mars.”