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A lunar training device has experienced microgravity for the first time.
A flywheel design intended for flying on the Artemis2 astronaut mission around the moon, scheduled no earlier than 2025, conducted six parabolic flights over Canada the week of July 15. Researchers flew in a business jet known as the Falcon 20, which took off from Montreal before diving and climbing through the air.
“We’ve been trying to understand how we can coach the exercise technique on the flywheel and how we can prescribe the exercises that the Artemis 2 crew will perform,” said Natalie Hirsch, the Canadian Space Agency‘s (CSA) project manager of operational space medicine, told Space.com.
Flywheels are popular for living in small spaces on Earth because they combine cardio exercises with weightlifting exercises like squats or deadlifts. But no one has ever been flown in room for, where is NASACSA and other Canadian government departments hope to fill the void.
Related: I flew weightless on a parabolic flight to watch incredible student science fly
CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen will be a mission specialist aboard the Artemis 2 mission and the first non-American to fly beyond low Earth orbit. (His crewmates are all NASA: Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch and Victor Glover. Koch and Glover will be the first woman and black person, respectively, to fly to the moon.)
NASA developed the flywheel for the Orion spacecraft, with plans to use the device at least through Artemis 5. CSA agreed to build a commercial replica — identical in size, gears and resistance levels — for training exercises. Before it even flew, however, CSA worked with a division of the Canadian Armed Forces to recruit 30 military and CSA participants for ground testing.
Participants completed 10 sessions with the commercial flywheel, including two familiarization sessions. Data were collected on body composition, resistance, cadence, and power and strength requirements to assess feasibility of use.
While those results were being evaluated, a small team took to the skies to use the flywheel for 20 seconds. The parabolic campaign aimed to answer questions such as which exercise program would be most effective, whether a small space was enough to do the exercise, and whether results on Earth would mirror those in microgravity.
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“We wanted to try out the exercises that we have planned for Artemis 2 in microgravity and better understand what it feels like to do those exercises on a flywheel,” Hirsch said. The group also wanted to identify other issues “that we need to consider in micro G,” Hirsch added.
The Falcon 20 is provided by Canada’s National Research Council, which has an experimental aerospace portfolio that includes parabolic flights, autonomous helicopter flights, atmospheric research and even the world’s first biofuel flight. While the Falcon 20 is mighty, space is limited: it’s so small that it’s difficult for most normal-sized people to stand upright inside.
“We ended up mounting a steel plate perpendicular to the floor of the Falcon 20 and mounting the flywheel to that plate,” Hirsch said. The athletes first lay on the floor and placed their feet in the flywheel straps. The goal was to get their feet slightly elevated into an Earth-like position. gravitywith just enough comfort for exercise, even as the body floats naturally in the microgravity phases of flight.
Related: How will the Artemis 2 astronauts train on their way to the moon?
Hirsch said the campaign gave them confidence in the flywheel design. In 18 parabolas in each flight, they found that rowing exercises (the cardiovascular portion of the crew’s exercise) could be performed even while floating free of the usual guides available on commercial rowing machines.
While most of the exercises went according to plan, the squat may require some rethinking. The flywheel requires the athlete to wear a harness, with the flywheel strap going into the steel platform between the athlete’s feet.
“One of the things we noticed is that, I think, because of that direction of pull, people tend to rotate forward when they squat,” Hirsch said. In a Orion spacecraftWith so little space available, the concern would be that the structure might accidentally be “bumped into” during the exercise. But NASA and the CSA are working on it, she stressed, and are already talking about lessons learned and possible ways to reposition future exercisers.
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Also on board the parabolas was a set of devices for CSA’s Health Beyond Initiative, which aims to make wearable devices useful both during spaceflight and in remote communities. SoilThe tested portfolio includes the EZResus app, from the non-profit company Applications MD; EZResus won the CSA Deep Space Healthcare Challenge in 2023 for the approach to resuscitating people in the field, including the accurate administration of medication.
“We brought a wide range of devices,” Tristan Richmond, CSA operations engineer, said in a separate interview with Space.com. Health Beyond’s selected wearable devices and biomonitors were considered high priorities for future International Space Station missions and required good data in microgravity to advance their development.
As for the app, the goal was to test it in difficult conditions: “The app is made for emergency situations. It has to be intuitive and it has to remain intuitive in high-stress situations. And parabolic flights are really great for that. You get adrenaline and you can feel nauseous and dizzy. We were able to follow the medical algorithms on the app quite easily. So that was a great test.”