Training in a Spacecraft Simulator

Spacecraft are highly complex machines designed to transport humans into space safely, and return them back home again afterwards. Each mission requires hundreds of interdependent systems working in harmony in order to fulfill its task successfully.

Virtual reality simulations often use a combination of keyboard shortcuts and mouse clicks on virtual instrument panels to control their spacecraft, with some simulations being more realistic than others.

Space Mission Simulator

Space mission simulators provide astronauts with invaluable training and testing before embarking on real space flights. These part-task trainers give astronauts full virtual access to every system control, enabling them to practice every scenario that might arise on a mission and also foster teamwork skills.

These systems often come equipped with a comprehensive suite of simulations, from launch, rendezvous and reentry simulators to detailed models of planets and atmospheres for simulation tests that model mission effects on their surface.

Simulators offer an accurate representation of spacecraft flight and operation. Each simulator includes flight manuals and checklists used by real astronauts; in some instances they even feature high-resolution TrueEarth satellite imagery licensed from TerraMetrics for an authentic feel of taking off from KSC and going into orbit.

Apollo Capsule Prototype

So that astronauts could feel confident when flying the Apollo spacecraft, they required high-performance airplanes for practicing and honing their skills; simulators to recreate every possible spacecraft function and display (including those that would change with each flight); partial-gravity training in water or an airplane; docking trainers; as well as knowledge of software on board both command module (CM) and lunar module (LM).

CM 007 in the Museum represents the very first production-line capsule delivered to NASA for testing and training purposes. After receiving initial impact and acoustic testing at North American Plant in Downey, California it was sent onward to Manned Spaceflight Center Houston for modification into Apollo Block II configuration.

Discover our digital model of the Block II CM Columbia spaceship that carried Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to the Moon. Download its data files and use virtual-reality goggles to explore this artifact in great detail.

Virtual Mission Simulator

Virtual Mission Simulator (vMSS) allows students to experience first-hand what Space Shuttle astronauts face in orbit – such as deploying and servicing satellites, docking with and supplying the International Space Station, performing Extra Vehicular Activity, as well as experiencing what reentry plasma may look like when returning back home. Students can experience all these tasks from an interactive first-person view! vMSS offers students a first-person perspective view of Earth from space along with simulation of its environment for reentry plasma that covers an incoming NASA Shuttle when it returns back down towards home – offering real experience!

vMSS is hardware independent and works with any vehicle, sensor or asset; real-time or historic mission data can be displayed on 2D plots and charts in an immersive virtual environment for real-time or historic mission tracking. Furthermore, integration with Greenroom Robotics GAMA autonomy software and Lookout+ optical situational awareness solution provides a comprehensive virtual training solution.

NAWCAD researchers utilize the motion platform simulator to test the handling qualities of rotary-wing vehicles — such as fighter jets, helicopters and space shuttles — prior to actual construction or flight. This research serves an essential purpose: it ensures future aerospace systems meet expectations before being put into service.

Reentry

The Reentry Model is a best practices approach to reentry planning. It includes features and functionality such as comprehensive outcomes evaluation – in other words, finding out which types of activities work well as well as those which don’t.

Reentry theory rests on the belief that arrhythmias result from electrical pathways connecting back into themselves, often initiated by blocked impulses [1] . Functional reentry (leading circle circuit) has been linked with both ventricular fibrillation and preexcitation.

The “Circle of Reentry” proposes four requirements for successful reentry that arise from spatiotemporal interactions between trigger and substrate: local dispersion of excitability (eg, steep repolarization gradients), balance in size between regions of excitability and inexcitability and an excitable substrate such as an early reentrant tachycardia, and trigger that originates from excitable substrate (eg early reentrant tachycardia). These elements may be affected by factors like autonomic nerve activity, intra/extracellular homeostasis imbalance (eg, electrolyte imbalance or inflammation), medications, physical stress or myocardial stretch.