In recent years, the practice of telemedicine has grown considerably in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic as physicians were in high demand but physical consultations were restricted.
Due to this practice holotransportation was reinforced, a technology that is based on holograms and 3D modeling for the same purpose. It sounds like something out of science fiction, but the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has made a breakthrough in this regard after “sending” holographic doctors to the International Space Station (ISS, for its acronym in English), with which promises to revolutionize space travel.
According to a statement issued by NASA, in October 2021, Dr. Josef Schmid, NASA flight surgeon, as well as Fernando De La Pena Llaca, CEO of AEXA Aerospace, and their teams were the first humans ” holotransports” from Earth to space.
To accomplish this, NASA used technology developed by the startup AEXA Aerospace and the technology giant Microsoft. Although Microsoft has been using holoportation since 2016, this was the first time it was used to connect people between Earth and space.
This is a completely new way of human communication over great distances. Furthermore, it is a new form of human exploration, where our human entity can travel outside the planet. Our physical body is not there, but our human entity is absolutely there.
– Dr. Josef Schmid
Holotransportation makes it possible to capture, reconstruct, compress and transmit live 3D models of people in high quality, anywhere and in real time. Combined with mixed reality displays, it allows users to see, hear and interact with other participants as if they were present in the same physical space.
According to the statement, astronaut Thomas Pesquet, from the European Space Agency (ESA), had a two-way conversation with live images with Schmid and De La Pena. To accomplish this, Schmid and Pesquet connected via Microsoft Hololens Kinect camera and a personal computer with software customized by AEXA Aerospace.
Headquartered in Texas, AEXA Aerospace is dedicated to developing holotransportation technology to improve personal communication, training and real-time operations support. With this “handshake”, NASA and AEXA successfully demonstrated that it is possible to take telemedicine into space.
The next step in holoportation will be to integrate it with augmented reality and technology touch for purposes focused on remote documentation. NASA sees this new form of communication as a precursor to broader use on future missions, in which it plans to send astronauts back to the moon, Mars and other deep space locations where they are known to face significant challenges and communication delays.
We will use this for our private medical conferences, private psychiatric conferences, private family conferences, and to bring VIPs to the space station to visit the astronauts.
– National Aeronautics and Space Administration