Vlog 21: Exercising in a tiny space capsule

Uploaded on December 3, 2025

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Vlog 21: Exercising in a tiny space capsule

In this vlog, Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen explains the use of a flywheel exercise device in microgravity to maintain muscle and bone mass during space missions. 

The device allows astronauts to perform a variety of exercises: rowing, squats, deadlifts, curls, and high pulls with adjustable resistance. CSA exercise specialists help design exercise programs to keep astronauts healthy in space. (Credits: Canadian Space Agency, NASA, Fulwell 73 UK Limited)

So we do a bunch of different exercises with varied levels of resistance to really put a lot of stress on our muscles and our bones.

Exercising in microgravity is super important for the human body to maintain our muscle mass and our bone mass. Even though our mission is only nine days long, it will still help us with our rehabilitation when we come back to gravity nine days later.

This is the flywheel device. This is where it will be for launch. This little foot plate rotates out a little bit, and what I kind of want you to imagine is a rowing machine. So your feet go on these two plates here. Since we're in microgravity, we won't need a track or a seat on a rowing machine. We just row out in microgravity, up, on an angle away from the floor and up into the docking tunnel.

This device is designed such that we can do different exercises. So we can do rowing, like a cardiovascular workout, where you row at a lower resistance at a fast pace. But we can also change the dynamics of this device so that we can do weightlifting with it. So we can do squats, we can do deadlifts, we can do curls, we can do high pulls. So we can do a bunch of different exercises with varied levels of resistance to really put a lot of stress on our muscles and our bones with this device.

Some of my colleagues and trainers from the Canadian Space Agency actually practised with the device in an airplane, a microgravity flight, where they could test how it was going to work for us in space.

And they're helping us put together a program that'll keep us healthy, but also try to figure out how we will use it best.

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