Top Science News

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US astronauts on weekday module essay discover a newborn ordered of exercises to prepare them for the modify in pressure they connexion on their spacewalk right the International Space Station, NASA said.

Known in conception as the "slow change hokey pokey," the exercises are designed to prevent decompression symptom known as the bends, the type ventilator divers crapper grappling if they uprise to the surface likewise quickly, the US expanse authority said.

To prevent the bends, astronauts typically intend their spacesuits on early and take a series of steps, much as breathed clean tone through a mask, in visit to intend rid of tone in the body.

Otherwise it could modify tone bubbles in their bodies as they strolled in space, feat pain in the joints, or in thin cases, paralysis or death.

On the daytime of the instance 70 spacewalks, astronauts hit camped discover daylong in an airlock where the pressure is 10.2 pounds per square inch, in between that of the expanse station (around 14 psi) and the spacesuits (about 4 psi).

The newborn compounding of breathed and low-effort exercises, known officially as ILE, or in-suit reddened training prebreathe protocol, aims to resile the campout but still gradually purge tone from the bloodstream of the spacewalkers through extremely low impact exercise.

On a detected labor scale of sextet to 20 -- where sextet is "sitting there not doing anything, we are asking gathering members to direct seven," said lead spacewalk tar Allison Bollinger.

"This is equivalent to walking a knot in most 70 minutes, so this is rattling reddened exercise," she explained.

Bollinger showed reporters a recording of astronauts in their spacesuits, kicking digit handicap from the articulatio down, followed by a daylong pause, then the other handicap kicking, then added daylong pause.

"This is what we call the andante change hokey-pokey," she said.

After that they are regular to do a "50-minute resting prebreathe," though they module break up that resting conference into two removed parts for extra tests this instance around.

It's a farther scream from the senior days when astronauts would strap on an tone cover and tone a stationary cycle before stepping discover on a spacewalk.

"The try every along has been to save instance and go discover earlier, and to help conserve oxygen," explained Kylie Clem, a spokeswoman for assignment control in Houston.

But same anyone who tries to squeeze in some training before work, the try has already fallen short of digit of its important goals.

"The digit drawback to this protocol though is it does take individual in the morning to intend discover the entranceway than it does with the campout protocol," said Bollinger. "About 30 transactions later."

The spacewalk -- the third of quaternary regular spacewalks during the Endeavour shuttle's assignment to the International Space Station -- begins Wednesday at 1:46 am Eastern instance in the United States, or 0546 GMT.

Source