Space_Research

4.5 Space Research

Some of the recent works by NASA, America's space agency, have produced and broadcast a moving hologram prototype. SHIVA, the Spaceflight Holography Investigation in a Virtual Apparatus, was conceived in 1999 as an aid to conducting research in space. The "microgravity" environment found in orbit around the Earth has many advantages for scientists who want a greater understanding of physics, chemistry and biology. Unfortunately, excellent living conditions, safety and a regular home life are not among them. The answer is unmanned missions. But experiments on these still need to be controlled and observed, which is hard when the researchers cannot see what is going on. SHIVA is designed to overcome this by broadcasting the moving 3D images. In principle, making a moving hologram is easy. Just as a moving picture is actually a series of stills shown in quick succession, so a moving hologram would be a series of still holograms. The problem is that individual still holograms contain so much information that they are usually captured on the film. The electronic cameras used in television cannot provide anything like this level of resolution. However, electronic holography for scientific purposes need not suffer from that limitation. The scientist unlike the entertainer can wait until the data are rebuild up (PROQUEST.UMI.COM, 2004).