It may sound more like a scene from Star Trek, but a NASA doctor and his team have become the first humans to be 'holoported' from Earth into space.

Flight surgeon Dr Josef Schmid suddenly found himself beamed to the middle of the International Space Station (ISS), where he was able to enjoy a two-way conversation and even share a handshake with French astronaut Thomas Pesquet.

Holoportation is a type of technology that allows high-quality 3D models of people to be reconstructed, compressed and transmitted live anywhere in real time, Dr Schmid said.

When combined with mixed reality displays such as Microsoft's HoloLens, it allows users to see, hear, and interact with remote participants in 3D as if they are actually present in the same physical space. 

Holoportation has been used by Microsoft since 2016, but this is the first time the technology has been deployed in such an extreme and remote environment as space.

'This is completely new manner of human communication across vast distances,' Dr Schmid said. 

'Furthermore, it is a brand-new way of human exploration, where our human entity is able to travel off the planet. Our physical body is not there, but our human entity absolutely is there.