Abstract
Preflight training is vital for astronauts to fulfill the on-orbit tasks successfully, and traditional physical simulators have played an important role in the training process. However, for the space station which consists of multiple modules, the physical simulators may be insufficient for the preflight training as the intra-vehicular room has been much larger and the structure has become much more complex than the spaceships. The emerging virtual reality technology provides an alternative way to build up the simulated intra-vehicular environment on the ground and is becoming more and more popular in astronaut training, but its utilization is still needed to be identified. In this study, based on the Astronaut Virtual Training System (AVTS) developed, an experiment was conducted to evaluate the utilization of the virtual training simulators in contrast with the physical simulators. The results showed that the AVTS had a good utilization and could surpass the physical simulators in the intra-vehicular layout familiarization training.