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March 21, 2014
A new skin-tight onesie has been designed to help astronauts on space stations protect their muscles and backs. Although the effects of weightlessness look fun – doing floating tumble turns around your spaceship, sleeping in a pod, even brushing your teeth with a ball of water – the human body has evolved over millennia to work under the influence of Earth’s gravity. Without it, things go wrong.
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A new skin-tight onesie has been designed to help astronauts on
space stations protect their muscles and backs.
Although the effects of weightlessness look fun – doing floating
tumble turns around your spaceship, sleeping in a pod, even brushing
your teeth with a ball of water – the human body has evolved over
millennia to work under the influence of Earth’s gravity. Without it,
things go wrong.
Astronauts start to lose muscle tissue and minerals from their bones
because there is less pressure on the weight-bearing parts of their
body – the legs, hips and spine. Their spines also elongate by up to
2.5 inches, as the discs between the vertebrae are not being pushed
downwards, which creates back problems.
To prevent bone and muscle loss, astronauts currently have to
exercise for two hours a day while they are in space. But now
scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), King’s
College, London, and the European Space Agency’s Space Medicine Office
are working on a special suit that replicates the effects of gravity
and counters negative effects to the body.
The suit could play a vital role in any future expeditions to Mars,
when space travelers will be without gravity for months on end.
“There is a great risk that we will be too weak to function
optimally on the surface of Mars,” said David Green of King’s College,
London. “When we replicate that ‘first step for man, giant leap for
mankind’ moment on the Martian surface there’s this great risk [that
the astronaut could] trip, fall and fracture their hip.”
The sleeveless gravity loading countermeasure skinsuit is made of
hundreds of layers of elastic material that squeeze the body but remain
comfortable. The suit is tighter near the feet than the head, mimicking
the way that gravitational pull works on Earth.
It is hoped that the skin-tight outfit will mean the astronauts have
to spend less time exercising. Instead, they will protect their muscles
simply by wearing the suit as they go about their everyday tasks.
The suit has so far been tested only on the ground, but it is due to
be worn by Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen during his 10-day mission
to the International Space Station (ISS) in September, 2015. Tim Peake,
the British astronaut, may also get the chance to try it out when he
sets off to spend five and a half months on the ISS later that year.
As with many developments in space technology, it may turn out that
you don’t have to be an astronaut to benefit. Researchers hope that the
technology behind the skinsuit also has the potential to help those
here on Earth with lower-back problems or with conditions that cause
muscles to atrophy.
