The Quest 3 headsets are on their way to the International Space Station

Two Quest 3 headsets will soon be on their way to the International Space Station to train astronauts on spacewalks before they exit the actual hatch.

Meta says it’s the result of “six years of collaboration” with the European Space Agency (ESA).

The Quest 3 will be far from the first XR headset to land on the ISS.

In 2015, Microsoft sent an original HoloLens AR headset to the ISS with a remote expert mode so ground crews could assist astronauts with repairs and a process mode that could override equipment tutorials for innovative systems.

In 2017, Oculus sent a Rift VR headset to the station, where ESA astronauts Thomas Besquet and Alexander Gerst used it for microgravity neural experiments.

In 2023, HTC launched the Vive Focus 3 to support the mental health of astronauts by providing immersive 360-degree videos of peaceful places on Earth.

For the previous three missions, the headset’s tracking system had to be heavily modified to work properly in microgravity. Earth headsets use an accelerometer in their IMU (inertial measurement unit) to align the gravity vector with the Earth’s orientation, but trying to use this in space would cause static drift. For the Rift mission, Oculus replaced the Rift’s star tracking system for a third-party solution better suited to customizing microgravity. Meanwhile, the HTC Vive Focus 3 tweaked the tracking system, tracking one of the wall-mounted controllers as an anchor point, so the headset has a fixed point to align its movement to.

Now for Quest 3, the change is minimal. According to Meta, the team behind the cruise mode, which is slated to ship in 2024, has expanded to work in microgravity, first for planes and now in support of trains. Airplanes, trains and space stations – it has a ring to it. While the IMU chip’s accelerometer is largely ignored in airplanes, it is completely ignored in the space station, where the headset is completely monitored from its cameras.

Quest 3 will be part of the swan song era of spacewalk training. Construction on the ISS’s orbit began in 1998, and the aging station is currently slated to be decommissioned in 2031, with private companies taking the human presence in Earth orbit while the nations behind the ISS, with the notable exception of Russia, move to build the Artemis moon base.

When they get to the moon sometime in the 2030s, the inhabitants of the Artemis site will surely have their own headsets, with all the significant advances in XR technology we can expect over the next 5-10 years. For training applications, the headsets can improve the quality of life of these deep space astronauts, giving them entertainment and virtual relaxation environments that make them feel like they’re back home in a private cinema.

You can visit space stations in VR at home

Astronauts can sometimes use VR to feel like they’re on Earth, and you can do the opposite at home to feel like you’re on the International Space Station with Mission: ISS. It’s free, available on Quest and Meta PC VR Store.

Mission: ISS is a free space simulation where you become an astronaut

Virtual reality is a great platform for users to experience amazing worlds and wonders, but it is also a portal to real-life wonders. Outer Space is one of the most incredible of those wonders and VR users get

The VR experience puts you inside the first commercial space station

Vast’s VR experience puts you inside Haven-1, which will be set up as a private sector space station starting next year. It is available on Quest, Apple Vision Pro and PC VR.

You can also visit one of the planned private successor stations to the ISS in Vast Haven-1 VR, which is free and also available on the Meta Horizon Store for Quest, the Apple App Store for Vision Pro, and Steam for PC VR.