This timelapse shows ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen working with Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergei Volkov during the iriss mission to unpack, setup, test and then store the MARES muscle-measurement machine in Europe’s space laboratory Columbus on the International Space Station over three days. <br /> <br />The Muscle Atrophy Research and Exercise System, or MARES for short, is a three-in-one muscle-measurement machine on the International Space Station that monitors astronauts’ muscles as they work out. <br /> <br />Muscle strength decreases during spaceflight and researchers need to know why this happens in order to prepare for long-duration missions and safe space tourism. MARES is an exercise bench that offers detailed information about how muscles behave during spaceflight. <br /> <br />MARES was a large part of Andreas’s ten-day iriss mission to the International Space Station that started 2 September 2015. <br /> <br />Follow Andreas via http://andreasmogensen.esa.int/ <br />Read more about the MARES experiment on the iriss blog.
