Augmented Reality applications as digital experiments for education – An example in the Earth-Moon System

Abstract “You realise that the Earth is nothing but accumulated cosmic dust having formed a rock that is encompassed by a flimsy, fragile atmosphere. To grasp this, I needed the view out of the window.” German ESA Astronaut Alexander Gerst's perspective on Earth was changed sustainably by the view from the International Space Station (ISS) onto our home planet. It is possible to give pupils a very similar perspective within the means of public education due to the availability of Earth Observation data from the ISS. However, the data can be put to more educational use than providing a taste of the overview effect. Applying common remote sensing methods and modern teaching concepts to EO (Earth Observation) data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) High Definition Earth Viewing experiment, teaching modules for several STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) subjects could be implemented successfully. Building on this success, more ISS EO sensors are being implemented in teaching materials and new media techniques are explored. The more recent addition to the material pool are smartphone apps using Augmented Reality (AR) with which the pupils can experiment on their own. These apps are developed in a partial What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) application development system called Unity with the Vuforia extension, the latter allowing the use of printed images as reference markers for AR. Complex theoretical topics can be visualised in 3-dimensional (3D) animations or turned into inexpensive, easy digital experiments. The app “The Earth-Moon System” applies this with experiments on the effects of changes in the distance between Earth and Moon and a 3D animation on the barycentre between two celestial bodies. Development of such apps is feasible for researchers to visualise their data even with no prior app development knowledge.