A UNIVERSITY of Canberra (UC) researcher has placed Australia on the global space stage after developing technology that will be used by NASA.

Physiotherapy professor Dr Gordon Waddington led a team that designed a novel system to assess the impact of weightlessness on an astronaut following spaceflight. The team further developed a “sensory sock” to counteract those effects and increase astronaut’s movement.

Dr Waddington presented the system to NASA earlier this month at the NASA Johnson Space Centre (JSC) in Houston, USA.

“We know that movement ability after long periods of space flight is severely reduced and these technologies will allow us to undertake the next exciting stage of the project,” said Dr Waddington.

“We will be working with staff at NASA JSC and assessing methods of increasing safety for astronauts when they need to move about immediately following the long trip to Mars.”

The project – VertiSense-Mitigation of Sensorimotor Effects of Simulated Weightlessness – was funded by the Australian Space Agency, and supported by Australian companies elmTEK and SRC Health.

“This represents an exciting stage in this project for our team at the University of Canberra,” said Dr Waddington.

“The Australian Space Agency-funded grant enabled us to fabricate and deliver new Australian-designed technology to the Human Sensorimotor Research Lab at the NASA JSC.”

The next stage of the project involves integration and piloting the systems within the human research program at NASA JSC later this year, which will form part of a comprehensive evaluation process.