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Goddard Space Flight Center

Office of the Chief Technologist

Office of the Chief Technologist

Two Columns

Feature

High-Tech Spelunking: Goddard Engineers Build the CAVE, a 3D Immersive Environment

Space craft landing.

John Van Eepoel (seated) and Steve Queen use a special workstation to operate the Goddard CAVE, which is located in Building 28. The new, fully immersive environment was developed in part with R&D funds.

No one has bent a scrap of metal, but at least one of the four spacecraft to be built as part of NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission exists — and not just on paper or on a computer screen, either. It exists in its 3D holographic glory, suspended in a pitch-black, room-sized cube, surrounded by a gazillion stars.

Welcome to the CAVE — Goddard’s newest visualization tool.

Now open for business, the facility is available to any engineer or scientist who needs to “see” and interact with complex systems before he or she actually commits to their designs.

“In essence, what we do is use our high-fidelity simulation capabilities to visualize 3D models developed in CAD (computer-aided design) packages as they would move under the laws of physics,” said Dave Folta, an aerospace engineer who, along with his colleague, Steve Queen, created the facility for Goddard’s Mission Design and Navigation Branch (MDNB). “Our facility is stereoscopic and fully immersive,” Queen added. “You can actually walk around the object you’ve created.”

Dark, Small Space

Manufactured by Christie Digital Systems and SGI, the CAVE is appropriately named: it is a dark, relatively small space measuring only 12 feet x 12 feet x12 feet. To experience the CAVE, users wear special 3D eyewear and carry a wand to command and control the visualizations. The facility’s Linux-based visualization system projects images onto three walls and the floor to create the fully immersive environment.

Efforts to develop such a capability began more than three years ago when Folta visited an immersive environment at Purdue University, which at the time was co-researching dynamical systems and libration-orbit trajectories under a grant with Goddard. “I thought to myself, ‘we’ve got to get one of these,’” he recalled. At about the same time, Queen started working on algorithms and other technology to develop a workstation simulator to help plan the Hubble Space Telescope Robotic Servicing and De-orbit mission. When NASA canceled that mission, Queen continued his work using Internal Research and Development (IRAD) program funding.

Queen and Folta ultimately joined forces, working part-time to raise funds to buy the equipment and renovate the Building 28 office space that would house the facility.

New Level of Realism

Although visualization environments aren’t new, and today are used by a myriad of industries and universities, no one has created a simulated orbital environment that offers the same level of realism. “We’ve done the legwork of creating the surroundings; all our people need to do is fill in the space,” Queen added.

Various projects have begun to do just that. The MMS project used the CAVE to better understand the dynamics of the spacecraft’s body and Folta has begun to use the technology to visualize complex trajectories. Bo Naasz, an IRAD principal investigator, is developing navigation algorithms and a high-fidelity simulation of a landing on a small celestial body. His CAVE demonstration is planned for late this year. The MDNB plans to use the CAVE for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution missions.

Folta says the CAVE also is ideal for visualizing complex attitude-control technologies, astrophysics- and Earth-related science missions, or the hazards a rover might encounter on the Moon or Mars.

“This isn’t a one-way street,” Folta said. “It’s not just for visualizing output from a CAD.” He envisions users designing systems in the CAVE so that they see and experience those designs in real time. “We’re just in our infancy as to what we can do with this facility.”

Technologies

Goddard technologists win new work, secure follow-on funding to mature new technologies, formulate concepts, and validate new instrument concepts in flight demonstrations — successes that benefit Goddard and the scientific community as a whole.