NASA wants to prepare astronauts to Mars with Unreal Engine 5

There’s no doubt that it has caught the attention of many manufacturers and companies because of the level of realism Unreal Engine 5 can offer. One of them is NASA, plans to build a Mars-based virtual reality for its astronauts.

Although this project is still in the early stages of development, Epic Games and the simulation maker known as Buendea will launch a competition for developers to submit their environment suggestions For this simulation based on the red planet.

With this project, the idea is that astronauts can perform actions such as building a base, maintaining it, exploring the planet on foot or by vehicles, preparing scientific notes for research, and many more activities. All this will be done in the Mars XR Operations Support System, maintained by the organization itself and Buendea.

In order to attract the attention of the public, The space agency is offering a $70,000 reward for each of the five categories: scientific research, maintenance, exploration, setting up a camp, and a rather bizarre camp (possibly referring to something NASA hasn’t thought of yet) that’s described as “blowing our minds.”

It is worth noting that currently, although it is in its infancy, it is already a simulation with 400 square kilometers of programmed terrain. The selected projects will integrate this current universe and assist the agency’s future projects.