Back2Earth

Find a way to adapt common gym tools for a reduced gravity environment and design a workout routine that can minimize bone and muscular loss while being fun and easy to use during a long term mission. In doing so consider constraints regarding weight (equipment should weigh less than 500kg) and dimensions. Consider incorporating virtual reality to simulate a jog through an astronaut’s favorite Earth destinations or incorporate gaming to motivate users.

Due to the absence of gravity, astronauts need to keep their bones and muscles healthy. Astronauts exercise for 2.5 hours daily in a confined location on the ISS.

Also, astronauts will feel the strain of time spent away from friends, family, an astronaut’s hometown, the hiking trail behind their neighborhood, the baseball field next to the high school, a jog with their spouse, leaves changing in the fall and flowers blooming in the spring.

We interviewed astronaut Douglas Wheelock exploring the challenges that astronauts face while away from home. He mentioned that being away from home you miss the sounds, sights and smells that you experience on daily basis on earth. We presented to him recreating scenes and worlds from earth to exercise and run through. We even went a step further to explore an environment where we recreate sounds of birds and leaves to simulate a more realistic environment and provide scents and smells that would further immerse astronauts into a semi realistic experience of running on earth.

Unity 3d to build the environment

Assets for the forest environment: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/1...