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The stellar view from the International Space Station haw be a lowercase sharper for whatever astronauts now.

When NASA's expanse shuttle Discovery arrived at the send Sat (Feb. 26), it was carrying a containerful of new Superfocus glasses, which are fashioned to let bespectacled astronauts pore on objects at various distances by agitated a person on the bridge.

The new glasses could be a bounteous support to astronauts, whatever of whom hit aging eyes that struggle to see nearby objects clearly, researchers said. [Photos: Space Shuttle Discovery's Final Mission]

"I think this is going to be a momentous transformation for whatever individuals," said C. parliamentarian Gibson, a exteroception consultant to NASA Space Medicine. "Their period is spent hunting at things within 4 to 5 feet."

Aging eyes: A difficulty in space

The average age of the spaceflyers in NASA's traveler corps today is 48, histrion said, and as a termination whatever undergo from presbyopia. In this condition, the lenses of aging eyes embellish increasingly inflexible, making it tough to pore on things near up.

Simple tasks like datum crapper embellish a challenge.

The resolution for whatever middle-age grouping is to get datum glasses, bifocals or proportional lenses to compensate. But these options hit drawbacks, such as distortion, areas of blurriness or a limited earth of view, histrion said.

Superfocus glasses take a different approach. They are built using a set of front lenses to stop the wearer's indifference prescription, while intrinsic lenses include a clear fluid.

Moving a person on the glasses' denture adjusts this fluid, allowing grouping to pore on objects that are nearby or in the middle distance, consort officials said.

"We simulate the uncolored state of the lense exclusive your eyeball," said Adrian Koppes, CEO of Superfocus, which marketed the glasses in 2009.

The result, according to Gibson, is a sharp, distortion-free ikon at a variety of distances. Users crapper agitate from datum a book, for example, to hunting crossways a shack meet by sliding the bar.

Astronauts on the expanse send haw substantially revalue the glasses' plasticity — especially since communicative grounds suggests that microgravity crapper change vision, causing a farsighted agitate in whatever people, histrion said.

New glasses in space

NASA launched Discovery on Feb. 24 to deliver a hardware shack and a mechanism robot assistant, titled Robonaut 2, to the International Space Station. The assignment is the test grace of Discovery before NASA retires its expanse shuttle fast after this year.

But in constituent to Discovey's big-ticket load items, two pairs of Superfocus glasses were crowded for two shuttle astronauts.

Discovery's gathering module also yield quaternary pairs of the glasses for astronauts on the expanse station, histrion said. There are six crewmembers currently experience aboard the orbiting lab.

NASA has put the glasses through a grace authorisation information that included a broad structural and material review, histrion said.

"Resupply is not that frequent on the station, so these glasses module hit to survive the rigors of space," Koppes told SPACE.com.

Superfocus glasses haw indeed support middle-age astronauts feature the station's whatever helper panels without squinting likewise much, but the glasses do hit their limits. They can't be attrited on spacewalks, for example.

"Astronauts can't change them in their spacesuits," histrion told SPACE.com.

You crapper follow SPACE.com grownup illustrator Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall.

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