How important is exercise while in space?
On Earth, people can walk into the gym, break a sweat and get a great workout in. But at the International Space Station, the gym equipment looks a little different.
NASA and international partners have designed various equipment so astronauts and other crew members can work out during their stay on the ISS including a bike, a weightlifting system, treadmills and more.
But, as humans venture on long duration missions taking bulky gym equipment is tricky, especially a large treadmill. So now, scientists and researchers are studying how important a treadmill is to human health in space.
This exercise research, called the Zero T-2 study, is observing the importance of running and walking while in space to help determine if a treadmill is necessary for missions to the moon and Mars.
Stuart Lee, the associate element scientist for the Human Health Countermeasures element at NASA’s Human Research Program, said while the general consensus from astronauts and crew members on the ISS enjoy the treadmill, it may be too bulky to bring along.
“The treadmill is your way to replicate that you normally walk around on the ground,” Lee said. “So that you're prepared when we're talking about exploration missions going to the moon and Mars, that you're still comfortable with walking.”
The study splits up astronauts into groups that use everything as normal including the treadmill and one group that does not utilize the treadmill. Lee said the third group uses the “planned exploration exercise device, which combines several modalities, or some aerobic and resistive exercise into one device, but it's more compact.”
While the ISS is about the size of a football field, the Orion spacecraft that will be used in the Artemis missions to take the crew to the moon is much smaller. Lee said this study will help push that mission forward by maintaining their health and future missions.
“When you think about the first time you do any activity, you're never an expert the first time you do it,” Lee said. “Then on top of that, you are now in an environment which may put stresses on your body and in different ways, and unstresses your body in different ways.”
Keeping the Voyager mission alive since 1977
Back in 1977, Voyager 1 and 2 launched just about a month apart, on a mission to explore our solar system and the outer planets. But after about 48 years, the spacecraft have gone beyond their original mission, and all together have journeyed over 29 billion miles.
Kareem Badaruddin, the mission manager for the Voyager Interstellar Mission, said when he looked at the original design documents for the spacecraft, everything was designed to last at least seven years.
“The idea was Jupiter and Saturn were the most important part of the mission,” Badaruddin said. “If we could get Uranus and Neptune, that would be fantastic and anything else was crazy talk. But yet, here we are in the crazy talk part of the mission. We’ve been going for decades; we'll be 48 years this summer.”
But after four decades, the spacecraft are starting to show their age. To keep them alive, Badaruddin said systems on the spacecraft must be turned off. On Voyager 1 for example the cosmic ray subsystem, or CRS, was turned off. Badaruddin said its “an instrument that measures galactic cosmic rays, galactic cosmic ray spectra and changes in the energy spectra of certain elements like hydrogen and helium.”
Later this month, Voyager 2’s CRS system will also be turned off. Aside from the systems, Badaruddin said the biggest problems the spacecraft faces are with heating and thrusters. Scientists and engineers working on the mission hope to get the spacecraft to at least 50 years.
“We should be so lucky that we get to the point that power is what gets us,” Badaruddin said. “That we just simply don't have enough power left.
