"Star Trek" fans, make sure you're sitting for this: We are coming closer to being "beamed up" as evidenced by a lifelike digital rendering of a NASA doctor appearing as a hologram on the International Space Station.
The communication is being called a mix of "hologram" and "teleportation," allowing for vocal and visual interactions between scientists on Earth and astronauts off-world.
Dr. Josef Schmid was holoported to the ISS in 2021 with his team as they were recorded by a high-tech camera, compressed, and beamed to the space station, reports Space.
Astronauts in space were able to view the hologram with a "mixed-reality display" called the HoloLens, a headset that blends the digital doctors with the environment on the ISS.
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"Imagine you can bring the best instructor or the actual designer of a particularly complex technology right beside you wherever you might be working on it," Schmid said.
The technology is being considered a breakthrough as it could play a significant role in long-term space exploration.
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Astronaut Mark Vande Hei recently broke the record for the longest record space flight by a NASA astronaut. When he returned to Earth, he shared that he was serving as a case study for the long-term effects of space on the human body.
While researchers looked at the physical effects, Vande Hei shared that staying connected to loved ones is critical for the mental aspect of any long-term space flight or trip.
"I think in a situation where you're going to Mars, and you're looking back at the Earth, and you're basically trying to pick out what looks like a faintly blue star, that's going to be challenging for human beings," Vande Hei said. "That is a long, long way away, distance-wise."
This new technology could solve that problem while also improving safety on long-space flights.
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But before that can happen, the technology needs to be improved as distances between space stations and planets would create delays in the signal. For example, there would be a 20-minute delay from Mars to Earth, InterestingEngineering.com reported.
The first HoloLens was released by Microsoft in 2015, and the company shared that mixed reality is the next "wave in computing following mainframes, PCs, and smartphones."
The U.S. Army is developing the HoloLens after Microsoft won a $22 billion deal to use the technology for military applications.
As for now, the tech needs some improvement before we are sending not just our likeness but ourselves into space like Captain Kirk and Scottie.
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