If you ever dreamed of communicating with your loved ones in the form of a hologram in the best Star Wars or Stark Trek style, The NASA recently demonstrated that it is more a reality than a simple dream.
From Earth to the International Space Station (ISS), the US space agency virtually teleported a doctorthe surgeon Josef Schmid, a virtual trip to space through a hologram and that can revolutionize communications between our planet and the ISS.
This experiment was carried out in 2021, but NASA revealed it this week it’s a statement quoted on the website of ComputerHoy.
Using a new technology called holoportation, the agency managed to virtually transport several people to the International Space Station. In addition to Schmid, members of the holoportation team such as Andrew Madrid, Dr. Fernando De La Pena Llaca, RIhab Sadik, Kevin Bryant, Mackenzie Hoffman and Wes Tarkington were seen.
How did they do it?
Using the Microsoft Hololens Kinect camera and a personal computer with custom software from AexaEuropean Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Pesquet, had a two-way conversation with live images of Schmid and De La Pena located in the middle of ISS.
This was the first holoportation handshake of Earth in space.
holoportation is a type of capture technology that allows high-quality 3D models of people to be reconstructed, compressed and transmitted live and in real timeSchmid explained.
When pairs with mixed reality displays like HoloLensallows users to see, hear and interact with remote participants in 3D as if they were actually present in the same physical space.
Holoportation has been in use since at least 2016 by Microsoft, but this is the first use in an environment as extreme and remote as space. Schmid is ambitious and cataloged this technique as “a new form of human exploration”.
“This is a completely new way of human communication over great distances. Furthermore, it is a new form of human exploration, where our human entity can travel outside the planet. Our physical body is not there, but our human entity is absolutely there.”.
He added: “It doesn’t matter if the space station is traveling at 17,500 mph and constantly moving in orbit 250 miles above Earth, the astronaut can come back three minutes or three weeks later and with the system up and running, we’ll be there at that location, live. on the space station”.
NASA is demonstrating this new form of communication as a precursor to wider use on future missions. Plans are to use this next with two-way communication, where people on Earth are holoported into space and astronauts are placed back on Earth, a very personal resource for staying in touch with both colleagues and family.
“We will use this for our private medical conferences, private psychiatric conferences, private family conferences, and to bring VIPs to the space station to visit the astronauts”, they expressed.
