Multi-mission, Interactive 3D Visualization in a Web Browser for Robotic System and Space Flight Mission Development and Operations

Leveraging on our experience developing engineering accurate, interactive 3D visualization systems for robotic system and flight mission formulation, development and operations, our team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has built a high performance, interactive 3D visualization system called Ranger, that runs in a web browser and has been designed for use during the entire mission life-cycle. This includes mission formulation through operations, robotic system research, flight mission design and development, simulation test-bed experiments and in-the-field testing. Our Ranger system not only provides robotic missions with a to-scale situational awareness visualization capability, but also an interactive commanding tool whereby user interactions in the web browser can be communicated back through the system to robotic system or spacecraft control software. In this paper we will discuss the Ranger system architecture, rendering performance, current use cases and deployments, system development challenges, as well as a newly implemented fully immersive VR system capability.