The First VR Camera in Space Allows You To Be an Armchair Astronaut

When Yuri Gagarin became the first human to behold Earth from space, he was overcome with emotion. "I see Earth!" he exclaimed from Vostok 1. "It is so beautiful!" When he returned, he told Soviet reporters that he "saw for the first time how beautiful our planet is. Mankind, let us preserve and increase this beauty, and not destroy it!"

There wasn't a term for Gagarin's passionate testimony at the time, but today we know that he undoubtedly experienced the Overview Effect—a kind of euphoric cognitive shift inspired the sight of the Earth from space, which has been reported by dozens of astronauts.

Now, an ambitious partnership headed by entrepreneur Ryan Holmes and space engineer Isaac DeSouza aims to make the Overview Effect accessible to everyone. "Since Yuri Gagarin, we've had 540 people experience the Earth from space," DeSouza told me at a press meeting last Friday.

"540 people experiencing space is a novelty," he continued. "One million people experiencing it is a movement. One billion people, and we've revolutionized how the planet thinks of the Earth."

That is the essential mission statement behind SpaceVR, the world's first virtual reality platform designed for outer space. Holmes and DeSouza have already assembled a team and built their first VR camera, the Overview One, which is slated for launch to the International Space Station (ISS) by the end of the year.

"Our main partner is Nanoracks, which controls the majority of private activity on the ISS," Holmes told me. "Through them we're, in a few days, going to be manifested on an Orbital ATK rocket to launch in December."

Once it is up and running, anyone with a VR platform will be able have access to a virtual reality riff on the Overview Effect. "We are not going to be able to do livestreaming right away," said DeSouza. "That will take a little bit of time to get set up on the space station. Communication from there is very hard. But we will be having the recorded sessions streamed to Earth."

"The applications for this content, especially for people in the space industry, are huge," he added. "But I think for the world in general, it is going to be fantastic. Just to be able to know what it's like to be an astronaut and float around. Even if you don't want to go [to space], you should have the option."

To that end, SpaceVR launched a Kickstarter campaign this morning to gauge the public interest both in Overview One, and other mission concepts the team would like to pull off down the line. They have a set goal to raise $500,000 before September 10, but regardless of the campaign's outcome, the first camera will launch.

"We are ready to go," DeSouza told me. "[Overview One] will go up there. What we're really trying to do right now is open up access to space to the consumer market, not just the commercial market."

"Space is hard," he said, referencing a common refrain within the space industry. "But with the right team, space is easy. We've done most of the work already. We just want to know what the world thinks of this. The more supporters we have, the faster we'll get there, the more places we'll go. That's the core of what SpaceVR is trying to doing here."

Indeed, the SpaceVR team has no lack of ideas about how to expand the role of off-Earth VR over the coming years. For example, Holmes and DeSouza hope to follow up their first camera with another one designed for spacewalks, and then another that can survive reentry.

"The camera is quite small and it can be paired with a small deployable heat shield so from the space station an astronaut can literally just quarterback the camera back to Earth," said Holmes.

The SpaceVR team has even considered the possibility of building an entertainment infrastructure in orbit with VR-capable CubeSats, which are popular, miniaturized satellites. "What if instead of playing a video game in space or watching Star Wars, you just log on to your own VR spacecraft in orbit and have a little laser battle with your friends, from the ground?" DeSouza speculated.

"This is what happens when Silicon Valley meets the space industry," he said.

In this way, SpaceVR's mission is to not only grant the average person access to space, but to redefine our relationship with it. To help me get a sense of that potential, I looked at a picture of the Martian surface, taken by the Curiosity rover, on Holmes's Oculus. It is definitely a much more immersive experience to be surrounded by an image, seeing Curiosity's POV no matter where I turned. From the comfort of a conference room, I was on Mars.

One day, Holmes said, the team hopes to genuinely extend SpaceVR's reach to Mars, and other exotic locations in the solar system. "That's been our dream from the get go," he told me.

"Right now, space isn't accessible. But the more people interact with it, the more people know it's a destination they can go to, then the more people pay attention and really prioritize funding NASA and other space agencies."