Space Apps Challenge 2018

Motivation

Mankind was always curious about the night sky and that big white round object curiously staring at us as long as we existed- "Moon". We, humans, reached the moon and have taken the first footsteps on the lunar surface through the Apollo 11 mission. But did the moon reach us?

We team Olik, created a virtual immersive experience which will bring moon close to us like never before.

Only 12 astronauts have walked on the moon in the history of mankind. So it is quite rare to be this close to the moon. In Lunar VR we tried to give the user an opportunity to explore the moon and marvel at its beauty.

Solution

We have created three experience for now. One of them is solar eclipse seen from the moon, which is known as "lunar eclipse" to us. The moon's surface turns red as the earth casts its shadow. The strange thing is all of the sunrises and sunsets on earth are visible from the moon at that moment.



The second one is interactive Apollo 11 landing site. The user can interact with the first footprints, the lunar module, moon rocks and the surroundings.



And the third experience is orbiting the moon with the LRO satellite. Data collected by LRO has been described as essential for planning NASA's future human and robotic mission to the moon. Craters like Copernicus, Kepler and Aristarchus can be seen from up above.

We created a virtual assistant to help user go through the entire experience. We call her 'Luna'.

We used google cardboard SDK to create Lunar VR which is widely supported by low-cost VR headsets. That means Lunar VR will be available to a wide range of users without any visible cost.

As young generations can easily experience Lunar VR, they will be much more curious about the outer world.

Main Features of Lunar VR:

• Exploring the landing site of Apollo 11
• Orbiting over the moon with LRO satellite
• Observing Eclipse from the lunar surface
• Informative description of different points of interests by virtual exploration assistant "Luna"

Resources used from NASA:

• 3D model of Lunar Module (https://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/detail/lunarlandernofo...)
• 3D model of Apollo 11 Landing site (https://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/detail/Apollo11-Landin...)
• Texture map of Moon (https://moontrek.jpl.nasa.gov/ )
• LRO Diviner Surface Temperature Mosaic (https://trek.nasa.gov/moon/TrekWS/rest/cat/data/st...)
• Bootprint texture of first man on the moon ( https://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/detail/as11-40-5878 )
• Apollo 11 mission information ( https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions...)
• LRO 3D model (https://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/detail/jpl-vtad-lro)

Development process :

• A design of the VR interface was planned initially and three different environment was selected for final development.
• To design each different scene 3D resources were collected from NASA 3D resource site.
• More additional elements of the environment were designed using Autodesk Maya and Blender.
• The core application is being developed in Unity 3D game engine.
• To keep the cost as low as possible Cardboard VR was targeted for production usage.
• To have better user experience point and select system is used in VR interface.
• All the scripts were written in C# programming language

Tools used:

• Unity 3D
• Blender
• C# programming language
• Adobe Photoshop
• Google Cardboard SDK
• TTS service used from Neospeech (www.neospeech.com)

Checkout:

GitHub
Google Play Store