XR technology is not limited to Earth as it is being used today by NASA and JAXA on the International Space Station (ISS).
The crew onboard the ISS is no stranger to XR technology. They recently assisted with a VR documentary and have been increasing usage on Earth for training. On one of the latest NASA blogs, they mentioned how the technology is being incorporated as a tool of utility and for experimentation.
On the utility side, NASA Flight Engineer Megan McArthur used an AR headset to assist in repairing and prepping the Cold Atom Lab (CAL). The headset is part of NASA’s Sidekick initiative that uses modified Microsoft Hololens units.
For experimentation, Commander Akihiko Hoshide from JAXA dons a VR headset in between his duties to assist NASA’s research on project VECTION. The project aims to find how the body adapts to the lack of gravity-fed stimulus in regards to sensing movement and estimating distance from objects.
XR’s applications are vast and varied, from the consumer space with our phones cameras, enthusiasts with VR headsets, enterprise users training all sorts of fields, to beyond the earth in space. XR technology is here, and with each new improvement comes more use cases for its application.
