It’s been 47 years this summer since NASA first put a man on the moon. To celebrate that game-changing Apollo 11 mission, the Smithsonian Institute has created a high-resolution 3D scan of the Command Module Columbia’s interior—the spacecraft that catapulted the three-man crew of Neil Armstrong, “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins to lunar glory.
Screenshot of Interior VR of the Apollo 11. Watch how they pulled off the 3D documentation.
Capturing the real spacecraft for 3D was no cakewalk. Employing a robotic control system to access the vessel’s every nook and cranny, the Smithsonian team used laser scanners to scour more than a million measurement points per second at sub millimeter accuracy. That’s a lot of history to digitize. We should know. Hamilton uses 3D printing more and more each day, not just from prototype to production but in our sales, marketing and operations efforts, too.
To get inside the 3D Columbia experience, travel through the hatch here. It wouldn’t hurt to cue up 2001 Space Odyssey while you’re at it.