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Completed
Project Objective
To advance NASA's/MSFC's capabilities to simulate the lighting environment on the lunar south pole.
Project Description
NASA's Artemis missions will travel to the lunar south pole (LSP) due to potential for water ice, as well as near-constant access to sunlight for solar power. However, this sunlight creates a harsh optical environment for explorers, both human and robotic. At the LSP, the Sun never crosses more than a few degrees above or below the horizon, and the Sun orbits the pole once every 28 Earth days, equating to a change in azimuth of almost 13 degrees per day. There is little light diffusion due to the lack of lunar atmosphere, which creates a large dynamic range of bright light and dark shadows.
In order to characterize and explore this problem, this effort was established to explore existing lighting simulation capabilities at MSFC and develop the knowledge and tools to address engineering, design, and safety concerns associated with the lunar lighting environment. The Virtual Environments Lab (VEL) has Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Motion Capture (MoCap) capabilities used for human task assessments. Using Unreal Engine 5, VEL engineers developed a VR-compatible virtual environment of the LSP, with lighting and shadows implemented to represent the lighting environment.
The Flat Floor Robotics Lab (FFRL) is a facility with a 44 x 86 foot air bearing epoxy floor used for the development of space technology. The FFRL also has a 48-kW solar simulator previously used to simulate orbital lighting. With this simulator and the benefits of a facility already designed to perform lighting tests, the FFRL can be arranged in a simulation of LSP lighting conditions by using the epoxy floor as a staging area for a mockup lunar surface. The FFRL utilizes fabric in the place of regolith simulant to protect both the facility and its users.
Project Results and Conclusions
This project has provided MSFC with a lunar south pole lighting simulation in Unreal Engine 5 compatible with VR headsets. Several months of research and development went into this effort with different tools and resources gathered and documented for future implementation. This VR environment also includes a lunar lander model and software features needed to support task assessments for lunar vehicle inspection (simulating damage on models, users identifying this damage in software, ability to change the sun angle and position, etc.).
In the FFRL, a 1/3rd scale of NASA's government reference lander model was designed and constructed onto an existing air bearing base. This mockup can be floated on air bearings and positioned relative to the solar simulator to create different lighting angles. The mockup also allows different fuselage panels to be installed, specifically, panels with simulated damage that can be used for task assessment. A mockup of this scale also allows the FFRL to support future lighting simulation and testing, such as that with the Handheld Universal Lunar Cameras (HULCs).
A human task assessment plan has been developed for conducting probability of detection (POD) analysis, both in VR and in the FFRL. While time and budget slips have caused this analysis to be postponed, MSFC possesses all of the resources and documentation needed to complete this assessment.
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