Day started with an early exercise session on the ARED.
ARED stands for Advanced Resistive Exercise Machine. It’s been on ISS for several years now and it has really made a huge difference in the effectiveness of resistive exercise in limiting bone loss in long duration crewmembers. We’re scheduled every day for a session on ARED and we are given protocols that are especially designed to target critical areas of bone loss, like for example the hip.
You can see in the pictures cosmonaut Tolya Ivanishin and astronaut Kevin Ford perform on orbit some of the many exercises you can do on ARED. It replicated the effect of working out with dumbbells and barbells, except that, as you can imagine, those would not be very effective in weightlessness. Instead, ARED has two big vacuum cylinders and we can set the resistance continuously in a very wide range.
The rest of the day will be dedicated to science, as I will get an initial overview of the experiment complement in my increment. Looking forward to start working on that soon!
Kevin Ford using ARED. Credits: NASA
Tolya Ivanishin using ARED. Credits: NASA
Tolya Ivanishin using ARED. Credits: NASA
Tolya Ivanishin using ARED. Credits: NASA
13/08/2013