- Strap on your AR goggles.
We're going to space.
(flowing instrumental music)
NASA plans to send a couple
of Microsoft HoloLens headsets up
to the International Space Station.
I'm sure you're heard about
the HoloLens augmented reality headset,
but just in case, here's a quick overview.
It's a display you wear on your head.
The lenses are transparent,
so you can view
the actual world around you,
but the HoloLens can
overlay digital imagery
on the lenses, augmenting your experience.
So, NASA's going to send a couple
of them up the ISS.
Again, the first time
they tried to do this,
the SpaceX Falcon Nine
rocket carried the headsets
plus about 5,000 pounds of other stuff,
had a critical failure and
everything fell back to Earth
burning up upon reentry.
Fortunately, the spacecraft was unmanned,
and so while we lost a lot of stuff,
no one was hurt.
The next attempt to
get HoloLens into space
will take place in December 2015.
Right now, Microsoft is
preparing the HoloLens headsets
so they'll be certified for
use aboard the Space Station.
But, what the heck will the
astronauts use them for?
On Earth, the most popular
demos of the HoloLens
have largely focused on gaming,
but that doesn't mean astronauts
will be playing Minecraft in space.
Instead, they'll leverage the HoloLens
to perform practical tasks
such as performing repairs.
The HoloLens has a camera mounted on it,
meaning people back on Earth will be able
to view situations from an
ISS astronaut's perspective,
and experts on the ground can
make real-time annotations
that will pop up in the
astronaut's field of view
back at the ISS.
So, imagine you're floating in the ISS
looking at an
incomprehensibly complex panel
of switches, buttons and wires.
Someone on Earth is talking
you through a sensitive repair,
and as you look at the panel,
you can see specific parts
highlighted or circled
so that you can follow along step-by-step.
Seems pretty handy, and
if that isn't cool enough,
this technology will let
us Earth-bound mortals
do similar things.
Sure, we might be fixing a sink
rather than repairing a space station,
but it's still pretty cool.
Now, that's all for Now, right now,
but we'll have more Now later.
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