VRCORE Education partners with ISS National Lab to expand space education
By Ansharah Shakil, February 9 2025—
Every little kid dreams of going to space and through the virtual reality experience “ISS: Curiosity in Orbit”, they can. This hands-on experience, transforming school gyms into space labs, is being delivered in Canadian and U.S. schools in a partnership with VRCORE Education and the International Space Station National Laboratory (ISSNL), funded by a grant from ISSNL and NASA. Schools can begin to book the experience for next September.
The aim of the program is to increase the number of space-related jobs for students in middle school, high school and eventually post-secondary education: not just astronauts but space logistics, engineers and other similar jobs.
“What we’re doing with this program is taking the ISS, plucking it out of the sky, and putting it into a school’s gymnasium so students can explore the ISS and do experiments on it just like astronauts are doing up in space,” Jason Van Hierden, president of VRCORE Education, told the Gauntlet.
He explained that the students would be in the same virtual reality world together, headsets on, able to interact with each other and take on problems together. Students who participate in the experience can partake in STEM experiments and activities like crystallization growth, where there is no gravity and they can grow crystals in a uniform structure.
“It really gets kids’ minds going and they realize there’s a lot of interesting stuff that’s coming in the next 10 or 15 years like space manufacturing,” Van Hierden said. “The impacts we’re looking to have with the program … is creating a gymnasium-scale, virtual reality, multiplayer free roam experience.”
The experience will use advanced VR technology like the HTC Focus Series. VRCORE are headquartered in Calgary, with all their development — 3D asset design, sound, interactions with virtual reality — occurring in the city.
“We work with a couple of alumni in order to create those experiences,” Van Hierden said. “Calgary is a bit of a tech hub and it’s pretty cool if you can get a tech degree at UofC and potentially stay in Calgary and work here. There’s interest in hiring a couple of people from UofC in order to help us with this project.”
Examples of these positions include 3D modelers and salesmen. VRCORE have run VR summer camps for the past few years, with one experience being related to the sinking of the Titanic, where students book their ticket, get on the boat, enjoy their time and eventually sink.
“The students that come out of that 25-30 minute Titanic experience are quiet, every single time,” Van Hierden said. “It’s because they now have an emotional connection to the history that happened. It’s no longer a story in a book or a picture on the internet. It’s something that they experienced themselves.”
He agreed that students who experience the program are more likely to desire or pursue a space-related career.
“If a student is able to go on the ISS they’re able to interact with the equipment, they’re able to look around, this is what it looks like, this is what it feels like,” he said. “I think there’s a much higher chance that they remember that forever.”
More information about VRCORE Education and the partnership with ISS can be found on their website.