ESA’s HERA mission will visit the binary Didymos asteroid system (consisting of Didymain and Didimoon) in 2026 to investigate the effects of an impactor sent by NASA to collide with the smaller asteroid Didymoon in 2022 (DART mission). This experiment will show if an asteroid can be deflected by an impactor to protect Earth. VRVis will provide tools for a visual analysis of the effects within its PRo3D viewer for planetary science. Based on reconstructions from JOANNEUM Research of the Didymos system, PRo3D can be used to study the crater of the impact site along with various additional measurement of the HERA probe as layers of its 3D GIS functionality. Furthermore, VRVis generates animations of impact simulations from University of Vienna with its high-performance Aardvark point cloud renderer, which will be used for planning and communication purposes.
Area Coordinator Smart Worlds & Head of GeoSMAQ, Geospatial Visualization, Semantic Modelling, and Acquisition Group
traxler(at)vrvis.at +43 1 908 98 92 520Start: 02.2020
End: ongoing
Joanneum Research, ESA
Our partners at Joanneum Research will use images taken by HERA to produce a 3D reconstruction of the Didymos system. To prepare for this they first evaluate how well the reconstruction works for different simulated trajectories of the spacecraft, using a preliminary model of the Didymos system. To simulate the images the HERA spacecraft would take, they use PRo3D, a specialised open-source viewer for space exploration developed here at VRVis. From the simulated images they create 3D models, which they compare to the original. For this we implemented some comparison tools in PRo3D.
When we load the two models, they are superimposed. We can toggle their visibility to only see one of them at a time. Apart from general parameters like size and rotation, we can compare selected areas on both models. We select an area by clicking on the models and change its size using the keyboard. Once we are satisfied with the area we can calculate the local distances between the surfaces. Each coloured sphere represents a point where we measured the distance between the two surfaces. We can see in the legend on the left that small distances are displayed in green, and large distances in red. We can move the camera closer and turn the visibility of the models on or off to explore further. We can choose which model’s vertices are used as locations to calculate distances, effectively letting us choose between a higher and a lower resolution of measurements.
Since we do not have any high resolution images of the Didymos system, our simulation and measurement approach helps predict the expected accuracy of the 3D reconstruction and supports the selection of optimum image capture conditions during the mission.
Animation of simulation results of an impact with the high performance point cloud renderer Aardvark, based on 1 million particles and considering the porosity of the surface
In the PROVEX project, JOANNEUM Research and VRVis are developing a provenance-aware workflow management tool for heterogeneous data for use in ESA's HERA mission.
The "Mars-DL" project is investigating how a deep learning system can support the research work of planetary scientists through object and pattern recognition. For this project VRVis has extended the functionality of PRo3D to automatically render shatter cone training images.
Support for planetary research: Visual analysis of reconstructions of the Mars surface and view planning for rover camera instruments.
Virtual exploration and geological analysis of reconstructed Mars surfaces and rock outcrops.
MINERVA is an integrated framework for planetary scientists allowing members of different instrument teams to cooperate synergistically in virtual workspaces by sharing observations, analyses and annotations of heterogonous mission data.
Planetary Robotics Vision Data Exploitation.