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| Holoportation team members are seen projected virtually on the International Space Station, Oct. 8, 2021. From left are Andrew Madrid, Dr. Fernando De La Pena Llaca, RIhab Sadik, Dr. Joe Schmid, Kevin Bryant, Mackenzie Hoffman, Wes Tarkington. |
I have a new noun for your vocabulary: Holoportation.
It's an amalgam of "hologram" and "teleportation," and though it may seem
like it, it isn't just a niche Sci-Fi term buried somewhere in Isaac Asimov
novels and Star Trek episodes.
In October, NASA used this mind-boggling, futuristic mechanism to bring
NASA flight surgeon Dr. Josef Schmid onto the International Space
Station
while he was safely planted on our planet. No rockets necessary.
Schmid was joined on this transdimensional journey by Fernando De La Pena
Llaca, the CEO of AEXA Aerospace, an organization that helped develop the
holoportation equipment, and a few other team members.
"It is a brand-new way of human exploration where our human entity is able
to travel off the planet," Schmid said in a statement. "Our physical body is
not there, but our human entity absolutely is there."
Though nearly unbelievable, holoportation isn't a totally new technology.
Microsoft came up with the idea several years ago, but with the primary
intention of revolutionizing sectors like advertising, terrestrial hospital
care and education and has since been steadily developing the concept. But
NASA's recent endeavor took the feat to the next level.
This is the first time such virtual transportation has successfully brought
people beyond planet Earth.
Here's how everything went down.
Basically, high-quality 3D models of the holoporters were developed,
digitally compressed, transmitted and reconstructed in the spaceborne lab --
all in real time.
Meanwhile, a mixed reality display aboard the ISS, namely Microsoft's
HoloLens, allowed both the holoporters and astronauts to see, hear and
interact with one another as though they were in the same physical space.
Astronaut Thomas Pesquet, for instance, had a two-way conversation with
Schmid and De La Pena right in the middle of the ISS despite being miles
upon miles away from the holoporters.
The trio even holographically shook hands.
"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 said in a statement.
And, going forward, the agency intends to scale-up its system by adding an
augmented reality function, which would give holoporters the option to
really move around the space station and observe things as though they're
literally there. Everything but the physical touch, you might say.
This could help with extraterrestrial telemedicine for astronauts, ISS
building projects and even greatly benefit future deep space exploration.
The latter bit is key, because standard radio communications typically
experience up to 20-minute delays when talking to systems way (way) out into
the void. With holoportation, holoporters could just stay onboard for
real-time communication.
"It doesn't matter that the space station is traveling 17,500 miles per hour
and in constant motion in orbit 250 miles above Earth," Schmid said. "The
astronaut can come back three minutes or three weeks later, and with the
system running, we will be there in that spot, living on the space station."
Plus, NASA says this could have direct applications on Earth, like for
researchers working in extreme environments or military operation
specialists.
"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. "You can work on the device together, much like
two of the best surgeons working during an operation. This would put
everyone at rest knowing the best team is working together on a critical
piece of hardware."
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Tags:
Space & Astrophysics