Simulation of Lunar Surface Activities and Supportive Heads-Up Display in Virtual Reality

Abstract

Large space agencies such as ESA and NASA are preparing for human return missions to the Moon. The ESA is currently actively working on the Argonaut, a lunar lander that will allow Europe autonomous access to the moon. However, designing and testing lunar operation solutions like the Argonaut costs resources and time. To combat this issue, novel technologies like Virtual Reality simulations are used to drive the fast development and evaluation of lunar operation solutions while also keeping the end user and other stakeholders in the loop with a more human-centered approach.

VR has already proven effective for training in various fields, including space applications. Nilsson et al. (2023) have simulated realistic lunar environments, and recent studies have examined the use of Heads-Up-Displays (HUDs) on the lunar surface (Bensch et al., 2024). HUDs, compared to Head-Down Displays, improve situational awareness and reduce user error by integrating critical information directly into the user’s field of view (Smith et al., 2016; Rebensky et al., 2022).

This thesis builds on that research and focuses, in cooperation with the ESA, on simulating a subtask of NASA’s Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP) in VR. Informed by preliminary interviews with end users, a HUD, designed to function in lighting conditions and terrain that can drastically change over a short period of time and displaying information such as biometric data and task sequences, will be incorporated in the simulation. After design and development according to these affordances, the resulting prototype will be tested again with end users to gather feedback and improvement for future design iterations. This work aims to support future astronaut training and improve the design of lunar scientific operations.