VirexLab a Virtual Reality Educational System

The VirexLab, the centerpiece of this Tietronix proposal offers significant innovation to NASA and to the Marshall Space Flight Center, implementing the Biological and Physical Research Enterprise education and outreach activities. VirexLab will be a collection of rich immersive settings with both hands-on and virtual components. These settings will focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning objectives. The objectives will integrate learning across the boundaries of subject matter, platform (setting), and institution yielding intellectual merit rarely seen in a single learning tool, an innovation in OBPR?s educational excellence. Tietronix proposes to develop a Virtual Reality (VR) educational system that can be used in multiple formats such as multimedia CD-ROMs, kiosks for museum settings, VR stations, and web sites that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. The VR lab would allow the students to experiment with devices as if in the microgravity of space or Earth gravity. The significance of our proposed innovations is that learners, both students and adult life-long learners, will participate in hands-on, immersive environments to experience NASA?s missions and discoveries.