Google Maps for space? One grad student is making it happen
Photo taken from the Orion spacecraft, which traveled to the moon as part of NASA's Artemis 1 mission. (Credit: NASA)
Dezell Turner slips on a set of sleek augmented reality goggles in the lobby of the Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences Building. Behind him stretches a floor-to-ceiling mural of space鈥攁 deep blue sky dotted with constellations and the cloudy shape of the Milky Way.
In his Microsoft HoloLens headset, however, Turner is experiencing a different kind of outer space.
Turner, a graduate student in aerospace engineering sciences and Smead Scholar at CU Boulder, waives his hands in front of him and pinches his fingers. Inside the headset, which only he can see, curving red and yellow lines appear. They join two dots, one representing Earth and the other the moon. With a few swipes, the lines shift, transforming from a relatively simple arc to more complicated curls and loop-de-loops.
It looks like a more dizzying version of directions you might follow on your phone during a road trip.
鈥淭his is like a holographic Google Maps for planning space missions,鈥 he said.
The new tool, which Turner developed working under advisor Jay McMahon, projects various paths a spacecraft could take to get to the moon through what scientists call 鈥渃islunar鈥 space. He named the software ASTROMECH, a nod to a class of droids in the Star Wars franchise.
Turner鈥檚 work arrives as the moon is having a moment. NASA鈥檚 plans to land humans on the lunar surface sometime this decade. Other entities, including a growing number of private companies, have their eyes set on space. Turner hopes that his AR tool will help some of those groups plan out their missions鈥攑icking routes and weighing factors like speed versus fuel cost.
For the budding aerospace engineer, the project is a chance to make the technology from some of his favorite movies a reality. Picture the scene in 2015鈥檚 Star Wars: The Force Awakens in which a droid projects a holographic map that will lead the characters to the location of a missing hero.
鈥淲hen R2D2 projects the map to Luke Skywalker, we鈥檙e creating a real-world version of that that鈥檚 hopefully just as intuitive to use,鈥 Turner said.
Miniature planetarium
Turner, who鈥檚 24, has loved space for as long as he can remember. When he was 4 years old, his parents bought him a projector that displayed a star map on the ceiling of his bedroom. He spent so long staring at the projection that he memorized many of the constellations.
But space is a lot more complicated than movies or his bedroom planetarium might make it seem. In Star Wars, if Han Solo needs to get somewhere, he just points the Millennium Falcon in the right direction and goes. In reality, spacecraft leaving Earth鈥檚 orbit are caught in the push and pull between the planet and its moon.
鈥淵our trajectories aren鈥檛 always going to be traditional shapes like ellipses and circles,鈥 Turner said. 鈥淪pacecraft may take all sorts of weird paths, and that can become very mathematically complicated.鈥
In 1969, for example, Apollo 11 took a relatively direct route to the moon, arriving in an orbit close to the lunar surface in about three days. More recently, NASA鈥檚 Artemis 1 mission, which launched in 2022 with no humans aboard, made a more circuitous pass. The mission鈥檚 Orion space capsule first circled the moon, using its gravity to slingshot roughly 40,000 miles out into space. That trip took five days.
Turner explained that some small aerospace companies may not have employees versed in those kinds of gravitational intricacies. ASTROMECH does the math for them.
鈥淭he ways in which Dezell is leveraging AR in designing ASTROMECH has the potential to make cislunar trajectory design much more understandable for most people in the industry,鈥 said McMahon, associate professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences. 鈥淭his could be hugely beneficial for training new employees and increasing small companies' ability to operate spacecraft in cislunar space.鈥
Alternate routes available
Back in the aerospace lobby, Turner demonstrates how he can pinch and swipe to compare those different routes.
Currently, the tool only tabulates fairly simple trajectories, similar to the direct path Apollo 11 took to the moon. But Turner would like to eventually add in more complicated routes. They include ones that take advantage of 鈥淟agrange points,鈥 or special spots in space where gravitational forces allow spacecraft to, essentially, park. The tool also includes an estimate for what aerospace engineers call delta-V, a calculation that roughly captures how much fuel a spacecraft will need to burn making maneuvers. Do you want to get to the moon fast and spend a bit more money or take your time and save on fuel?
Turner has a lot more work to do before aerospace companies can begin using ASTROMECH. One day, he envisions laying out trajectories for undertaking journeys even deeper into the solar system.
For now, he鈥檚 happy to have space at his fingerprints鈥攋ust like Rey gazing at R2D2鈥檚 map.
鈥淕etting to wear the headset really makes my day, especially when I鈥檝e been fighting bugs in my code,鈥 Turner said. 鈥淕etting to play with holograms makes me feel like a little kid.鈥