ESA Releases 3D Model of Comet 67P/CG For Home Use!

The ESA Rosetta project released 3D models constructed from their close up measurements of the comet 67P/CG this weekend.

Hooray!

This data may not be scientifically useful, but it is very useable by hobbyists.  Such as me.

With this data, I am able to 3D print a model of the comet.  I printed a tiny version at my local community Fab Lab.  It will take some work to clean up the model, but I got something.

What else can I do?  I can make games, virtual reality, and augmented reality applications.

I made a quick and simple Augmented Reality that maps the 3D model of the comet onto an image.  I used an image from the ESA blog, and made an app for my Android phone. It works quite nicely.

Basically, you point the phone at the image, and you see the 3D model hovering over the image, registered with it.  So you can move the comet around (by moving the 2D image) or move your view 360 around the model.  Really cool, but difficult to capture for the blog.

So – thanks to ESA for this fun, and please publish these 3D datasets.  (I can’t wait for the detailed 3D model of Philae.  That would be so-o-o cool to play with!)