XR in Space – Augmented Reality for Astronauts on the Moon with Leonie Bensch

This is the ignite episode of "XR in Space", a Spatial Realities
podcast-special. Imagine a shadow so black, it could be a hole. And
if you drop something into it, it's practical gone. That's a
realistic scenario for future moon missions. As the moon has no
atmosphere, light is not dispersed nor weekend at air molecules
leading to brutal light conditions you can not imagine as an
earthling. Starting 2030 we build the Artemis moon base from where
we might conduct complex missions not only on the surface of the
moon itself but also to start our journey to Mars. And so that
astronauts do not step into a shadow which is actually a hole in
the ground, stumble and damage their spacesuit or instruments, an
augmented reality interface could be helpful. Leonie Bensch,
Doctoral Candidate at the European Space Agency, researches exactly
that. In her research she develops AR scenarios in Virtual Reality
(VR) to test designs and gather feedback before developing costly
physical prototypes. For Example she examines how a grid might help
to understand the topographical feature of the moon surface or how
far an object is away. No easy task as safety and reliability has
top priority in space. Leonie is not only a researcher at ESA. As
one of three conference chairs she organized the Space CHI 4.0
conference which took place June 23-24, 2025 at the European
Astronaut Center in Cologne. This podcast-special was mainly
inspired by that conference, as there were many inspiring talks and
keynotes and even two ESA Astronauts taking part.