The government wants your help solving today’s biggest challenges
A few years ago, I tried to help a team of astronauts survive a Martian dust storm.
Fortunately, nobody was actually in danger. I was participating in the second NASA MarsXR Challenge, a government-sponsored competition hosted on the HeroX open-innovation platform. NASA wanted members of the public to design virtual reality scenarios that could someday help train astronauts for missions on Mars.
The first phase focused on storyboarding, so participants did not need to know how to program a VR simulation. They needed to imagine a realistic challenge, explain how astronauts would respond and take advantage of the immersive capabilities offered by virtual reality. My team designed a scenario in which astronauts left their rover behind while collecting rock samples in terrain too rough for a vehicle. When a surprise dust storm swept into the area and visibility began to collapse, they had to navigate back to the rover...
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