Apple Vision Pro Helps Astronauts Revisit Their Underwater Training

The idea is to give people reviewing the session a sense of being beside the astronaut. Apple says that perspective helps the team refine procedures and specialized techniques before a mission.

Why astronauts train underwater

NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (opens in a new tab) holds 6.2 million gallons of water in a pool 40 feet deep. It gives astronauts a place to rehearse spacewalks while divers help manage their buoyancy, allowing them to practice floating and working around large structures.

The pool contains a mockup of the outside of the International Space Station. It also has a simulated lunar surface (opens in a new tab) for Moonwalk training. Crews can work through tasks with physical equipment before doing them in space.

Vision Pro adds a way to review that practice afterward. The setup Apple shows uses cameras underwater and headsets in a room above the surface.

Bringing the session into Vision Pro

The clip describes a 180-degree 3D recording. That gives viewers depth and a wide view of the scene from the camera’s position. It remains a recording of the session, so viewers cannot freely move around it as they would in an interactive simulation.

Capturing that view underwater takes specialized equipment. Gates Underwater Products (opens in a new tab) says it developed its housing for the Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive camera in collaboration with Apple and Blackmagic Design. The system records separate views for each eye using dual 8K sensors at 90 frames per second.

Gates also calibrates the camera, housing, and glass dome together to keep the underwater image comfortable to view in Vision Pro. Apple’s immersive format (opens in a new tab) uses camera and lens data to preserve the scene’s scale and depth during playback.

That’s a pretty cool use of Vision Pro. The same kind of immersive video that puts us beside an athlete or inside a concert can help a spaceflight team revisit training together, bringing the view from the pool into the room where they prepare for space.