A pair of hi-tech sandals has been blasted into space to help monitor the effects of low gravity on astronauts’ bodies.
A crew of Russian, German and US astronauts docked with the International Space Station on Thursday, bringing with them some Nasa-designed footwear called ForceShoe.
The brown strap-on shoes sit atop small monitoring devices which will send data back to control centres on Earth.
They will be used when astronauts use the space station’s exercise device – known as Ared - to help better understand the forces placed on space explorers’ bodies.
Nasa said in a statement: "Crew members will be asked to set the Ared to provide specific loads in the same way they would set loads on a weightlifting machine at the gym.
"They will then lift the exercise bar and stand still on Ared while the shoes collect data.
"Dynamic exercise will include squats, deadlifts and bicep curls."
The spacecraft docked successfully with the ISS in the early hours of Thursday.
Russian cosmonaut Maxim Surayev, his Nasa colleague Reid Wiseman, and German Alexander Gerst from the European Space Agency opened the hatch into the ISS just over two hours later.
They hugged the crew of three already on board the international space laboratory, US astronaut Steve Swanson and Russians Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev.
The Soyuz craft had blasted off from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on schedule shortly before midnight Moscow time.
The new ISS crewmembers are due to carry out a mission lasting 167 days and return to Earth in November.
No comments:
Post a Comment