This page provides additional information about the Azure Kinect à La Luna (AKALL) project, which received funding in the DevelopSpace fall 2025 grants round.
The AKALL project is led by Dr. Don D. Haddad at MIT & NASA Ames, and develops an open-source software framework for affordable, low-bandwidth 3D imaging, reconstruction and analysis tailored to planetary exploration. Originally created as a payload for the NASA CLPS IM-2 mission onboard the Lunar Outpost’s Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP) rover, AKALL adapts and extends Microsoft’s Azure Kinect Time of Flight (ToF) RGB-Depth camera to operate in planetary analog and mission environments.
This research supported by the DevelopSpace grant expands on prior work to inform future strategies and methods for locating and characterizing water ice and other critical resources on planetary surfaces by analyzing the depth camera’s native Near Infrared (NIR) images captured at 850nm. AKALL has been validated in NASA Ames analog Lunar Lab and is actively maintained in open repositories. The software’s lightweight reconstruction engine and standardized data formats could support Mars surface science, mobility studies, and site evaluation, areas where low-cost, modular, and reproducible tools are urgently needed, blending the canvases of Science and Exploration.
Additional information about the project is available at the following links:
Example Applications:
- https://lunar.doppellab.space/?nd3=DF_LS300_HRN-1740371309582
- https://lunar.doppellab.space/dashboard