by I am standing so close to the JAXA Hayabusa2 asteroid lander that I could reach out and touch it. Instead, jump on top of it. Then I strike a pose. When I jumped off, I swam for a moment in the shallows gravity before you touch gently on the surface of Ryugu, a rocky world, gray without color and life.
The “I” in this case it’s my avatar, a digital approximation of myself with a more consistent beard length and not constantly rubbing sleep from his eyes. The Hayabusa2 spacecraft I stood on, and the an asteroid below, there are also digital avatars, recreated in virtual reality.
My VR experience is part of the Australian Astronomical Society’s Annual Scientific Meeting 2024, where the country’s astronomers come together to present new research, share results and mingle. This year’s meeting, in June, was almost entirely online, using the platform Spatial to provide attendees with access to the conference in VR.
A digital center was built, which included poster halls, exhibition halls, meeting rooms and a lecture hall The Future of Meetingsinternational collaboration that works to make meetings more sustainable and accessible.
Related: The asteroid Ryugu holds secrets about our solar system’s past, present and future
At first I was a little trepidatious about attending the conference in VR. I am a VR skeptic, having worked as a video games journalist and seen the up-and-down (mostly) hype surrounding this technology. But as a space tragedy and a person who stood on top of a dirt hill in Coober Pedy, Australia as examples from Ryugu hurtling came back to World in 2020, I would describe myself as well bloody excited to stand on an asteroid.
So, during the conference, I booted up Spatial, ran my avatar through the Exhibition Hall and plunged through a portal to Ryugu and the spacecraft that visited him in 2018. It felt like I was playing Super Mario 64 game and I jumped through a portrait.
Immediately, I fell onto the surface of the asteroid. The Ryugu model was created by OmniScopea start-up founded by astronomer Sasha Kaurov to create virtual worlds for scientific outreach, using real images captured by Hayabusa 2. It’s not a perfect replica but it certainly recreates the area around the spacecraft’s landing zone – the shadowy plain that gave JAXA with a spot to contact and grab content back in 2019.
Elizabeth Tasker, professor at JAXA and as part of the agency’s outreach team, they noted that it is difficult to determine whether Ryugu’s topology is to scale. However, she said, the Hayabusa2 models, as well as its lander and rovers, are to scale.
There’s not much to do in Ryugu World except marvel at the space, but that’s the point. This is not a video game. It is a tool. Especially i space and planetary science, the appeal is clear: By using real-world data and observations, we can visit places we’ll never be able to physically reach.
Tasker toured the Spatial exhibit during the ASA meeting, and pointed out specific features of the Hayabusa2 spacecraft – features that would not be as straightforward when presented in a PowerPoint slide. The digital 3D model provides a way to approach the spacecraft and examine details such as where its target markers and small launch impactor were stored during the operation.
However, Ryugu’s surface is not a complete asteroid. You can’t walk from one side to the other.
“I mentioned at the end of the trip that it was possible (and quite easy in the low gravity environment) to run off the end of the asteroid’s field of view and fall into space,” Tasker said. “This was supposed to be a warning, but promptly resulted in at least one heading for a (virtual) league! Fortunately, after falling for a short time timeyou are reborn back on the asteroid surface.”
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Standing on the VR surface of an asteroid, something happens in your brain that makes the experience sticky. I’ve written more words about Ryugu’s surface, its chemistry and its importance in planetary science than most, but I was able to stand on it, even digitally, a real “oh, damn” moment – an appreciation of the difficulty that about landing on her little rock, floating millions of miles from Earth.
Of course, when I was done, I jumped off the edge.
