In a nod to Star Trek fans, NASA flight surgeon Dr. Josef Schmid gave a Vulcan salute as he was appearing in hologram form on the International Space Station in October 2021. This all was able to happen through a process called “holoporting,” which is done through high quality 3D models of people that are reconstructed, compressed and then transmitted. This technology has been around since 2016, but had never been used in space.
Even though the actual human body is not there, the human likeness of the person is present. In this instance, the team members were not only able to see and speak to the ISS astronauts, they actually participated in the first holoportation handshake!
This holoportation technology will likely be used in future missions to Mars and also in possible extreme environments here on Earth.