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♪♪♪

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[Elkins] What makes data visualization a bit different from

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other types of animation is that some component

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of the visual, some aspect of the visual,

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is directly based on some type of science data.

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So in the case of the “Tour of Asteroid Bennu,” 

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the OSIRIS-REx trajectory is actually based on mission data.

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The model itself, the asteroid model, that is real LIDAR data

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that was collected from the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft.

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The imagery that you’re seeing wrapped to the surface of Bennu,

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that is actual satellite imagery taken by the spacecraft.

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And so that’s kind of the difference between visualization and animation,

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is – we’re showing the real data, this is the real asteroid.

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And so if we zoom all the way in on a boulder, that’s the real boulder,

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that’s what it looked like from the perspective of the spacecraft.

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I’m Kel Elkins, and I was the lead data visualizer on the “Tour of Asteroid Bennu.”

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I’m Dan Gallagher, I was the producer and writer on the “Tour of Asteroid Bennu.”

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“Tour of Asteroid Bennu” was inspired by an earlier video

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that was also made by NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio,

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and that video was called “Tour of the Moon.”

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The visualizer, Ernie Wright, used elevation data and high-resolution imagery

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from a NASA spacecraft called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

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And he was able to fly the camera very close to the lunar surface,

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and show the actual textures, shadows, highlights,

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in just the way that they would appear if you were

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hovering close to the surface of the Moon.

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[Elkins] So we kind of borrowed some of those techniques

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for the “Tour of Asteroid Bennu,”

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really using lighting as a way to help viewers understand

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the shape of Bennu and the shape of

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these different geological features we were zooming in on.

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Which just – it really helped the visualization come to life.

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[Gallagher] So a good example of how we use LIDAR

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comes about halfway through the video

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where we take viewers to a boulder called the Gargoyle.

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Now, the Gargoyle has a very complex, amorphous shape

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and it looks really different when you see it

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from different angles in two-dimensional photographs.

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But when we finally got a good 3D model of the Gargoyle,

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Kel was able to put a virtual camera down near the surface of Bennu,

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and rotate it around the boulder in a way that

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we never could with two-dimensional imagery.

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[Elkins] So something really cool about working on this

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particular visualization, and actually all the visualizations

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we made for the OSIRIS-REx mission, was,

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as the spacecraft got closer and closer to

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the asteroid on its way there, and as it spent more time

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studying the asteroid, the models got better and better.

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The data that was collected was getting better and better.

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So some of our early visualization tests we had this

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relatively low-poly model of the asteroid, and we could only

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push in so far with the camera – you can’t push in too far

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because then you just see, you know, individual polygons.

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But as we got further and further along we ended up

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with five-centimeter-resolution tiles,

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and you can push all the way in to individual boulders.

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And that’s just the nature of how these science missions work:

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the more time you spend with something the more data (you) collect,

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the better the models get.

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[Gallagher] Missions like OSIRIS-REx take us to

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places that we haven’t been before,

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literally new worlds that we’ve never experienced,

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but they show us those places in ways that

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can’t always be easily seen.

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“Tour of Asteroid Bennu” gives us a way not only to show the public

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what these places are like, but it almost gives us a remote presence.

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It allows viewers, and even scientists on the mission,

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to see these objects up close through technology.

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♪♪♪