Towards Leveraging Augmented and Virtual Reality for Spacecraft Mission Operations at ESOC

This paper presents the results of an activity at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) on moving towards leveraging Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR) for Spacecraft Mission Operations. Previous activities aimed at assessing feature sets and surveying possible application scenarios on a broader range. This activity specifically targets towards real-world application scenarios in spacecraft mission operations. Experiences from precursor activities and results from this activity indicate that the applicability for day-to-day use depends more on content creation and less on the sophistication of the employed AR/VR devices. Consequently, the activity aimed at providing an end-to-end toolchain integrating AR/VR components where they offer the most utility. The paper presents the conceptual and practical results from the activity including the proof-of-concept implementation.