In-Situ Reconstruction of the International Space Station Using 3D Gaussian Splatting and Astrobee

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2608.21685v1
• Date: Fri, 21 Aug 2026 23:20:16 GMT
• Title: In-Situ Reconstruction of the International Space Station Using 3D Gaussian Splatting and Astrobee
• Abstract summary: This article presents a novel 3D reconstruction and mapping of the interior of the International Space Station (ISS) using 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS)<n>We construct a full 3D splat of the ISS' Kib or Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) using existing grayscale images from the Astrobee free-flying robot dataset.<n>We show that with as little as 500 in-situ images, a high-fidelity map can be constructed using Astrobee's Navigation Camera (NavCam) during free-flight in the JEM.
• Score: 2.5146568776889877
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: This article presents a novel 3D reconstruction and mapping of the interior of the International Space Station (ISS) using 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS). Using existing grayscale images from the Astrobee free-flying robot dataset, we construct a full 3D splat of the ISS' Kibō or Japanese Experiment Module (JEM). 3DGS has in recent years shown promise in providing novel view synthesis of scenes captured from many images or videos, this article applies this approach to human spaceflight systems. We compare our 3DGS architecture to existing methods such as Nerfacto and TensoRF and show that reconstruction improves the state-of-the-art in both scene quality and rendering speed. We show that with as little as 500 in-situ images, a high-fidelity map can be constructed using Astrobee's Navigation Camera (NavCam) during free-flight in the JEM. These reconstructions could enable free-flyers to rapidly create and update interior maps for intra-vehicular habitats like the ISS.

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