Two days before the capsule’s triumphant return, the INTUITIVE® Planetarium at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala., collaborated with Cosm to host a live planetarium domecast, “To Bennu and Back: OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return.”
Streamed from the Cosm Experience Center in Salt Lake City, the live domecast extended its reach to more than 20 domes across four continents and has led to a continuously growing number of downloads of OSIRIS-REx cloud content among Cosm’s global network of Digistar planetariums.
Developed by the INTUITIVE® Planetarium team, including Director David Weigel and planetarium developers Brittany Kundert, Erika Silva, and Erin Nagelkirk, the live program guided viewers through the OSIRIS-REx story and featured interviews with key OSIRIS-REx team members Principal Investigator (PI) Dr. Dante Lauretta, Deputy PI Dr. Dani DellaGiustina, and Project Scientist Dr. Jason Dworkin. Mission Manager Solveig Irvine was in Salt Lake City to provide live commentary during the event.
Cosm’s cutting-edge LED display technology and high-resolution live streaming capabilities allowed for lifelike and fully immersive simulations of OSIRIS-REx mission highlights, created by the INTUITIVE® Planetarium. Viewers across the globe experienced Bennu’s dark and rocky surface, the sample collection, and the sample capsule’s return through the atmosphere to Earth’s surface.
“With a mission to unite planetariums and science enthusiasts, Cosm is proud to have celebrated this pivotal occasion in space exploration and human history with curious minds around the world,” said Melinda Orms, CX Engine and Digistar Product Manager at Cosm. “It felt really wonderful to celebrate this historic milestone in space exploration live in the dome with partners and communities from around the world. Our Digistar community produces amazing experiences and the broad level of engagement and enthusiasm for this event is a genuine testament to the value that comes from being a part of it. We are committed to engaged collaboration with our community so we can collectively experience the dedication, success, and exchange of groundbreaking ideas in science, like the historic OSIRIS-REx mission.”
INTUITIVE® Planetarium Director David Weigel also shared his excitement, saying, “I am thrilled at the success of the OSIRIS-REx Sample Return show, which was our first experience at domecasting. I’d like to commend the INTUITIVE® Planetarium team on beautiful visualizations created in Digistar that enabled us to amplify the OSIRIS-REx story. We appreciate the opportunity to work with both the OSIRIS-REx team and Cosm to produce a program highlighting such a captivating and successful asteroid mission. It is always a privilege to share the latest in space news with the public, and I look forward to opportunities for future collaboration.”
Follow the link below to learn more about Digistar and its domecasting capabilities that facilitate easy collaboration among the 700+ active Digistar sites around the world, enabling the global scientific community to share moments of excitement and discovery with the world – in real-time and in crisp detail.