The MarsVR team travelled to the MDRS in June 2018 and used a donated Matterport camera to take dozens of 360 panoramic scans of the inside of all of the MDRS facilities. These are not static 360 panoramas — you can use your computer’s arrow keys to move around inside of each of these Matterport environments.
MDRS Hab Interior Scan
This complete scan of the MDRS Hab interior allows you to walk around and (for the first time on Matterport) go inside all of the crew staterooms and other areas of the hab. In comparison to the 2014 scans done by Victor Luo (see below), these scans were done with the MDRS in a more “bare-bones” post-field season configuration, which is great since we can use these in conjuction with new 3-D models we’ll build out and overlay onto the facilities for the purposes of our training scenarios.
Previous Hab Interior Scan
It’s interesting to compare our new MDRS Hab Interior Scan with the December 2014 Matterport scans done by Victor Luo (of Crew 144, and now at JPL) which show the MDRS in a lived-in field season configuration:
The Musk Observatory (aka the MDRS Solar Observatory)
This observatory has been recently converted to be a Sun-focused observatory, but was our original astronomical observatory. It was built with funds donated by Elon Musk back in the early 2000s. (Before he became the real Tony Stark, or maybe a real-life James Bond villian. Love you Elon!)
RAM (Repair and Assembly Module)
Scans of the MDRS Airlock with the internal door open & closed, which we will use to build our training scenario for going through the airlock. With this, you can study in detail all of the donors from our 2002 fundraising plaque, which people have asked about 🙂 I can’t wait to put some CrowdExplorer stickers next to this in our VR environment (and maybe IRL during our MarsVR Crew 197 rotation in October!)
MDRS Airlock Inner Door Open:
MDRS Airlock Inner Door Closed:
MDRS Hab Equipment Room
MDRS Equipment Room:
MDRS Equipment Room 2:
This is amazing stuff, but this is only representative of the work done inside the facilities. The MarsVR team is also worked on a full VR simulation which will be widely available later this year. It includes scans of the interior and exterior of the facilities as well as 1 square mile of surrounding terrain.