[ Music ]>>The iRat or Integrated Resistance and Aerobic
Training Study is an exercise study that we just recently completed that involved having
participants in bed rest for…we had a 14 day study and also a 70 day study. We have
a lot of unanswered questions when it comes to, “What would you do for exercise for a
3 year mission to Mars?” Subjects were randomized into either an exercise group or a control
group. The control subjects did not do any exercise at all for the whole bed rest time.
The exercise participants, however, got to do treadmill exercise and cycling exercise
for their aerobic training. They participated in interval exercises and those were really
short, high intensity bouts of exercise. There were 3 different types of intervals; there
was a 30 second interval which is as hard as you can go for 30 seconds at a time and
then you get all of 15 seconds rest. There were also 2 minute and 4 minute intervals
each a little lower in intensity. In addition, there were 3 days a week of resistance exercise
and the resistance exercise would be squats, heel raises, combination of leg press and
hamstring curl. This study is similar to another study that we called Sprint and that is an
astronaut study that is performed on the Space Station. So instead of being in bed rest for
14 or 70 days, they would do 3 days a week on the ARED at a higher intensity. The usual
care for our ISS astronauts is 6 days a week on ARED at a lower intensity so we’re experimenting
with what about half of the exercise, but performed a slightly different way. I think there
would be a lot of benefits and a lot of information that we could learn from these studies because
there are a lot of people on earth who end up in bed rest for reasons other than signing
up for a research study. The iRat and the Sprint studies are really well situated to
inform our development of exercise countermeasures for long [background music] duration missions,
even up to 3 years for Mars. [ Music ]