An exercise science research team at Ball State is collaborating with NASA to create a program to keep astronauts in better condition once in space.
Graduate students are part of a team analyzing the muscle tissue of an astronaut who has been in space to make an exercise routine to help improve skeletal muscle health.
Scott Trappe, the Human Performance Lab director and exercise science professor, and his brother Todd Trappe, an exercise science professor, are leaders for the Integrated Resistance and Aerobic Training Study (Sprint). Together they have been working on this specific project since it started in 2011.
Examining and quantifying the skeletal muscle changes enables researchers to design exercise measures to prevent negative effects. Equipment such as the treadmill, bicycle and resistance system is now available at the International Space Station.
“If they were to do nothing while they were up at the space station for six months, they would lose 30 percent of their muscle mass, which is large,” Scott said.
As of now, astronauts are sent into space for six months, but this new research into muscle health could extend that time to a year.
The program includes workouts for astronauts when they are in space. The new program minimizing the exercise time from eight hours to one hour while they are in space.
Beginning in the mid ‘90s, the Human Performance Lab on campus has been involved in this research. So far, three astronauts have been tested at the space station in Houston, Texas.
A couple weeks ago, Scott and Todd traveled to the space station to help with tests on a returning astronaut.
“Scott and I both performed muscle biopsies individually to get muscle tissue to be analyzed here in the Human Performance Lab to kind of get an idea of what had changed in his muscle, as we had done the same thing prior to him going to space,” Todd said.
The brothers collaborated with the NASA team and some of the other investigators.
Students, support staff and technician’s make up the entire team of individuals who are involved in the specialty actions being put forth. Primarily master and doctoral students are involved and able to analyze the muscle and interpret the results.
The studies in which Ball State partakes is largely funded by NASA. In the Human Performance Lab there are various areas and tools to pursue examinations of tissue and of the overall human body.
“Ball State has a long history in the world of human and health performance. The lab started in the mid 1960s and really evolved through looking at athletic performance and the limits of athletic performance,” Todd said.
The work done in the early 1990s was led by a collaboration between Ball State and Marquette University to bring together expertise between whole body, physiology and molecular cellular physiology.
The NASA platform was changing to focus on muscle physiology and the laboratory played a leadership role in the scientific world. Ball State wrote a grant and was invited to be involved in the projects. Since then, 20 years later, it has evolved into something bigger.
