NASA Commander Chris Hadfield Experiences Virtual Reality EVA

Kate Lunau with her VR helmet. (Photo: Kate Lunau)

At NASA’s Johnson Space Center with astronaut Chris Hadfield, who is set to become the first Canadian commander of the International Space Station. 

In space, there’s no up or down—it’s a 360-degree world and that can be extremely disorienting, as Chris Hadfield learned shortly after getting suited up today at the NASA Johnson Space Center’s Virtual Reality lab, where he took a “spacewalk” with Jeremy Hansen, one of Canada’s newest astronauts.

Despite feeling mildly seasick as he roamed the outside of the International Space Station, it was a thrill.

At Johnson’s VR lab, astronauts practice for all sorts of situations they might encounter in real life on the ISS.

Canadian Chris Hadfield, who’ll assume command of the ISS in March, is working a lot in VR right now to master SAFER, a propulsive backpack that can save spacewalking astronauts should they drift away on an EVA.

In the VR lab, there’s a console filled with monitors where astronauts can operate a virtual Canadarm; and there’s another area where astronauts donning VR helmets can practice climbing all over the ISS to do a repair.

The view from inside the VR helmet. (Photo: Kate Lunau)

A software technician helped set Hadfield up: she put a massive helmet over his heads, and slipped wired gloves onto his hands.

As soon as the helmet was lowered over his eyes, Hadfield felt submerged in a different world. In front of him he could see the Space Station, and beyond it, the blue curve of Earth.

It was beautiful, but stomach churning: the perspective is nothing like on the ground. You can move in any direction, and this makes you feel immediately disoriented (no wonder even seasoned astronauts can get lost aboard the ISS).

The technician helped him figure out how to grab a railing and climb around; eventually he could see the other astronaut in his spacesuit in front of him, waving.

It’s easy to see why this type of practice is important for astronauts, especially when paired with work in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, a massive swimming pool containing a mockup of the ISS where they run through drills in their spacesuits but underwater in the NBL, there’s still an “up” and a “down.”

That wasn’t the case in VR, nor is it in space. When finally the helmet is taken off, his face was white as a sheet but even while battling nausea, the experience was so novel and exciting he didn’t want it to end.

Chris Hadfield said that the best part of the VR experience was when a technician 'fixed' him to the end of the Canadarm2 to really give me a view.