Scientists 'Visits' Mars with Augmented Reality: NASA EXHIBIT LETS YOU VIRTUALLY TOUR MARS

In order to bridge the decade-plus gap between the present and Mars (and probably to drum up public support for crewed Mars missions), NASA is unveiling Destination: Mars, a virtual reality-heavy exhibit opening this summer at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

At the exhibit, a visitor will wear Microsoft's augmented reality headset, the Hololens, to 'visit' Mars. Once inside the virtual world, visitors will be treated to a guided tour of the surface, with guides Erisa Hines, who drives the Mars Curiosity Rover, and astronaut Buzz Aldrin. NASA describes the exhibit as 'mixed reality' so there will be some physical elements stirred in to the virtual experience.

Hines and other NASA scientists have gotten to use this kind of technology already. NASA scientists like Abigail Fraeman, another Curiosity researcher, use a program called OnSight that takes images collected by the rover and creates a virtual reality version of Mars to explore.

"OnSight makes the whole process of analyzing the data feel a lot more natural to me," Fraeman said. "It really gives me the sense that I'm in the field when I put it on. Thinking about Martian geology is a lot more intuitive when I can stand in the scene and walk around the way I would if I were in the field."

"We may not be able to actually go to Mars yet, but we can go there virtually," said Parker Abercrombie, a software engineer at JPL who investigates different ways that software can enable augmented exploration.

And because the software was created using actual observations, researchers will be able to conduct valuable science, even while being more than 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) away. For instance, scientists could scale an escarpment to survey the view from that vantage point, or get on their hands and knees for a close-up view of the planet's rocky terrain.

"What's really exciting about this is [that] what we're looking at is a reconstruction of Mars from real data sent from the Curiosity rover," Abercrombie said. "This isn't an artist's conception of what Mars looks like. This is actually what Mars looks like."

Additionally, because Curiosity's mission is ongoing, JPL engineers will be able to make modifications based on the latest data.

"As the rover drives and takes more pictures, our reconstructions are constantly being updated and improved," Abercrombie said.

This holographic technology is also helping NASA build new spacecraft and rovers. At JPL, the HoloLens is being used to design the agency's next Mars rover, which is slated to launch in 2020. By projecting a virtual model of the rover in 3D space, engineers can get close-up views of how the various components fit together, add or move parts around easily, and even walk right through the model to see its inner workings. [Our sister site, Tom's Guide, put together a guide on the best VR headsets on the market right now.]

"It allows us to attain perspectives that are difficult, or even impossible, to attain with a physical model," Valderrama said. "It brings them out into the world so that our engineers can begin to reason and communicate about the models long before any physical artifact exists."