Digital Moon

Digital Moon Manuel Pimenta Virtual Moon, LLC., Rahway, NJ, 07065, USA Virtual Moon LLC, in partnership with E-Spaces is in the early phases of creating a Digital Twin of the Moon. The first step is creating an accurate, detailed, and realistic visual simulation of the Moon. The visual simulation will include all visual elements that can be seen from the vicinity or the surface of the Moon. The list of visual elements comprises detailed and realistic texture of the surface overlayed on the Moon’s topology dataset, an accurate starfield, the Earth and the Sun. In addition, all successful landing sites will be replicated in great detail. These include Apollo, Surveyor and Soviet Luna mission sites. The completed visual simulation of the Moon will be rendered as a fully immersive, interactive, Virtual Reality experience and will be named Virtual Moon. In addition to the visual experience, the simulation will include physics engines for gravity, temperature, radiation and an orbital mechanics module for the Sun-Earth-Moon system. The orbital mechanics module will drive the Virtual Moon simulation in real time. That means if you want to transport to the Moon virtually, you arrive, by default on the Moon in the present. However, you also have the ability to change time forward or backward to the future or past. This allows a user to set the time to a particularly interesting date, such as a Solar or Lunar eclipse and be able to watch them from the surface of the Moon. It will also allow time travel to mission landings such as Apollo, Surveyor and Luna as well as modern missions such as Chang-E and other missions to come. We have already created a demonstration of traveling to the past in Virtual Moon. This demo allows users to stand on the surface of the Moon, at Tranquility Base and watch the Eagle descend from on high (beginning at about 4 minutes before landing) and the entire landing trajectory is replicated as the Eagle approaches every closer and lands about 15 meters in front of the user. The radio chatter between the Eagle and Houston can be heard in real time during the event simulation. For travel to the future, Virtual Moon is building a large-scale permanent city near the Lunar South Pole on top of Malapert Mountain that will be fully integrated into Virtual Moon. The city will be a fully immersive, interactive VR simulation that users can explore as they wish, interact with other visitors and enjoy many other attractions. The city will not be only a visual simulation, it will also be built as a full Digital Twin of the first Off-Earth human settlement. All the systems necessary to make the city operational will be simulated as Digital Twins, simulating the actual functioning of each system and the interaction with other systems. The Digital Twin of the entire city will be a hierarchical collection of lower-level Digital Twins of each system, subsystem and component. Using Digital Twins will provide a platform to test and perfect engineering designs until a full solution to building an actual city on the Moon is achieved. The Lunar city will be an engineering and architectural model of what could be built on the Moon in 2045. It will be bold and ambitious. It will employ only current technology and near-term technology that is reasonably expected to mature in the next 15 to 20 years. The primary constraint on the design of the Lunar city is that it must be buildable. It must be a design that can actually be built on the Moon. Once completed, Virtual Moon will be accessible to the public at no cost. We want to transport millions of people to the Moon, virtually. Our aim is to teach and inspire everyone, but particularly the younger generations about the evolution of the Human Race into a Spacefaring Civilization. Virtual Moon will also be an excellent and endlessly fascinating platform for STEM education. As part of the Lunar city we mentioned above, there will be a Lunar Academy where the focus will be on hands-on lea