NASA revealed in a new post that in October last year, a team of hologram doctors was “holoported” to space to visit astronauts living aboard the International Space Station. The hologram teams, led by NASA flight surgeon Josef Schmid and Fernando De La Pe?a Llaca, CEO of software provider Aexa Aerospace, were the first humans to ever be “holoported” from Earth to space. “It is a brand-new way of human exploration. Our physical body is not there, but our human entity absolutely is there. It doesn’t matter that the space station is traveling 28,000 kilometers per hour and in constant motion in orbit 400 km above Earth, the astronaut can come back three minutes or three weeks later and with the system running, we will be there in that spot, live on the space station,” said Schmid. Using the Microsoft Hololens Kinect camera and a personal computer with custom Aexa software, European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet, who was on board the station at that time, had a holo-conversation with Schmid and De La Pena’s teams. The holograms of the doctors were visible live in the middle of the space station. The holoportation technology that enabled this event works using specialized image capture technology that reconstructs, compresses and transmits live 3D models of people. This technology couples with the HoloLens, a self-described “mixed reality headset” that combines sensors, optics and holographic processing tech to allow the wearer to see the hologram images or even enter a “virtual world.” With the two systems combined, users in orbit can not only see hologram participants, but can also hear and interact with them. Hologram is not new, but has never been used in an environment this challenging with users so far apart. According to NASA, it plans to try two-way hologram communication, in which they will send a hologram of the astronauts in space to Earth in addition to sending a hologram of Earth-bound users to space. “We’ll use this for our private medical conferences, private psychiatric conferences, private family conferences and to bring VIPs onto the space station to visit with astronauts,” NASA officials wrote. NASA also aims to use this technology for off-Earth tele-mentoring. “Imagine you can bring the best instructor or the actual designer of a particularly complex technology right beside you wherever you might be working on it,” Schmid said. “Furthermore, we will combine augmented reality with haptics,” Schmid said. Haptics refers to technology that can simulate touch through things like vibrations or motors. (SD-Agencies) | 