One Giant Leap for Mankind: NASA Sending High Tech Sandals into Space

NASA sent a newly developed pair of sandals called ForceShoe into space Thursday in order to help astronauts exercise when out of this world.

The brown-strap footwear is being worn by astronauts from the United States, Russia and Germany located on the International Space Station (ISS), according to Sky News.

Designed by XSENS, ForceShoe will help NASA collect data for studying the loads, or force, placed on crewmembers' bodies during exercise on the space station's Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED).

Maintaining astronaut bone and muscle health in microgravity is an ongoing concern for the space agency, and ForceShoe may be the answer.

"We are eager to understand how joint forces may be different between exercise performed on the ground and in space, and force shoe technology might help us do this in future investigations," Andrea Hanson, Ph.D. and ISS Exercise Hardware Specialist, said in a NASA news release.

The shoes contain 3-D motion tracking technology and force sensors. Astronauts will wear the high-tech sandals when exercising on ARED, which is a specially developed exercise machine.

"Crew members will be asked to set the ARED to provide specific loads in the same way they would set loads on a weightlifting machine at the gym," NASA wrote. "They will then lift the exercise bar and stand still on ARED while the shoes collect data."

The space explorers will perform exercises such as squats, weightlifting and bicep curls. The collected data will be used to build exercise programs on the ISS.

Enhancing researchers' understanding of exercise form and forces applied to the body when in space will help NASA recommend "the best exercise regimens for safe and effective bone and muscle strength maintenance during spaceflight."

The astronauts - Russian cosmonaut Maxim Surayev, his colleague Reid Wiseman from NASA, and Alexander Gerst from the European Space Agency - will wear ForceShoe on their 167-day mission on the Soyuz spacecraft. They are set to return to Earth in November.