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we've probably all stumbled or lost our

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balance at one time or another for space

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station astronauts it's a pretty common

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occurrence when they return to earth's

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gravity a study is now looking at

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astronauts vestibular systems that's

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part of your inner ear that controls

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balance to see why this happens and what

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they learn could help folks with those

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types of balance problems here on earth

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sitting down standing up it may not be

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as easy as you think for crew members

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coming back from the space station but

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there's a study 20 years in the making

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that's looking into that dr mill rescue

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joins us now tell us about this study

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first it was a pilot program now it's

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turning into a real investigation yes in

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cooperation with our russian

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counterparts we're looking at functional

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performance and one of the things that

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we're particularly interested in is how

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the vestibular system behaves the

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vestibular system being those organs in

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your inner ear that maintain

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your balance and help you see when your

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head is moving

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and because we're in the field doing

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this we can't ask somebody to walk for

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example on a treadmill and see how they

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can read while they walk

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so we simply bounce them up and down

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while they're trying to read a display

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tell us all about this gear though that

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she has on well we're looking at

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inertial sensors they're the ones that

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are blinking here that give us

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estimations of

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the person's angular acceleration and

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the angles that they are experiencing

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relative to the ground we have

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cardiovascular parameters that we

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measure heart rate and blood pressure

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as well as

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emg from the legs and so when a crew

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member once they get out of the soyuz

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then they suit up in this

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immediately

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they're taken to the to the

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medical tents and

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right away we start putting the hardware

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on them and doing the uh testing so he

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got here was was bouncing her up and

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down so what is that for

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what what what does this simulate

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this simulates walking okay and

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it also is in a plane

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that

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you expect to see

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as as you walk and

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is probably going to be less provocative

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than doing some other kind of a test of

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the inner ear organs and we're talking

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about this with crew members but this is

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helping folks on earth too absolutely

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we're dealing with an aging population

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now

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and countermeasures for the kinds of of

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difficulty that they experience

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is what's really needed quite frankly

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crew members are not terribly stable on

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their feet

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jack schmidt having a few problems we

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saw several times if you recall the moon

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flights where the crew members fell down

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and we're actually preparing for that by

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measuring

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recovery from a fall so we simulate a

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person that has fallen down

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and asked them to stand up

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and once because we get to mars there's

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nobody there

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once they're standing they stay standing

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for three minutes

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this this allows us to

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look at the cardiovascular parameters in

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terms of feigning for example all right

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oh that's better than i could do

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and so you stand there for three minutes

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and that tells you what

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we're looking constantly at position of

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the body

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sway how much they're moving as well as

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heart rate and blood pressure

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so how many tasks do we look at how many

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little exercises do they have to go

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through we have between 12 and 13

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including the russian activity that we

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we engage in

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okay and so you have one more for me one

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more for you you're going to do

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what's called a tandem heel to toe walk

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which

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we do with the eyes closed and the eyes

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open wow i've never done this one before

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promise i promise mom

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all right so

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cross my arms cross your arms close my

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eyes heel to toe

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see i have no balance and i've not even

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been

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in space so so what's the point of this

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the point of this is that this

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neurological function

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as a whole you know okay from

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the brain on down to the feet

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well mine apparently doesn't go together

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so

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and uh you did

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better than some astronauts