Rice students develop an award-winning adaptive exercise harness for astronauts to use in space
by Raji Natarajan for Rice News
Houston TX (SPX) Jun 12, 2025
In the reduced-gravity space environment, human muscles and bones atrophy faster than they do on Earth. To slow down that process, astronauts need several hours of vigorous exercise each day they are on a space mission. This requirement for regular rigorous exercise is expected to become more stringent in future manned space missions, which are expected to last longer, involve more challenging conditions and require astronauts to perform more demanding and complex spacewalks.
A team of Rice University students mentored by Vanessa Sanchez at the George R. Brown School for Engineering and Computing have designed an innovative space exercise harness that is comfortable, responsive and adaptable to new exercise modalities.
“Exercise harnesses that astronauts use now have notable limitations – they are uncomfortable and can cause chafing and bruising. So a primary goal of this challenge was to design an adaptive harness with better fit and comfort,” said Sanchez, assistant professor of mechanical engineering. “Our student-led team addressed this issue by adding pneumatic padding that offers a customized fit, distributes pressure over a large surface area to reduce discomfort or injuries and also seamlessly adapts to load shifts – all of which together improved astronauts’ performance.”
Current space-based exercise harnesses also have outdated technology. The team of undergraduates Emily Yao, Nikhil Ashri, Jose Noriega and Ben Bridges and graduate student Jack Kalicak had a secondary goal to modernize the exercise harness with sensors for astronauts to customize their workouts using real-time data and feedback. The Rice researchers added two sensors to measure astronauts’ comfort and exercise performance: The first measures temperature and humidity changes during exercise, while the second measures load distribution at common pressure points such as the shoulder and hips.
“Taking the lead on the electrical hardware and software systems and working closely with the rest of the team to seamlessly integrate them gave me a great introduction to collaborative engineering and how different parts come together to build a unified system,” Ashri said.
As space missions get longer and more complex, it is expected that astronauts will need a variety of new kinds of exercise routines to counteract the negative effects of reduced or no gravity. Future spacecrafts are also expected to be more compact with more weight restrictions. Thus, an important goal of the challenge was to design a lighter harness that can be adapted to new exercise modalities in the future. The team did this by adding more modular attachments and increased attachment points to target more muscle groups and better balance the load distribution.
The Rice engineering students developed this new harness in response to a challenge posted by the HumanWorks Lab and Life Science Labs at NASA and Johnson Space Center for the 2025 Technology Collaboration Center’s (TCC) Wearables Workshop and University Challenge.
“The TCC University Challenge is a highly anticipated annual competition organized by TCC, a multi-institutional coalition that facilitates industry, government and academic collaborations to solve real-world problems,” Kalicak said. “It was exciting and enriching to participate and compete with more than a dozen teams from other universities around the country to develop novel design solutions to 11 real-life technical challenges identified by industry leaders like ExxonMobil and NASA.”
This spring, experts from diverse fields ranging from biotech and oil and gas to space gathered at the Johnson Space Center in Houston for the competition and chose this adaptive harness as the winner for the Best Challenge Response Award.
“This challenge gave us the freedom to innovate and explore possibilities beyond the current harness technology,” Yao said. “I’m especially proud of how our team worked together to build a working prototype that not only has real-world impact but also provides a foundation that NASA and space companies can build and iterate upon. This makes the entire experience incredibly rewarding. It’s moments like these that remind me why I love designing with and for people.”
“It was very fulfilling to watch these young engineers work together to find innovative and tangible solutions to real-world problems,” Sanchez said. “They did impressive work researching the challenge, exploring potential approaches and coming up with creative design solutions to address a challenge that NASA and other space agencies around the world face. This innovative adjustable exercise harness transforms how astronauts exercise in space and will significantly improve their health and safety during spaceflights.”
Related Links
George R. Brown School for Engineering and Computing
Space Medicine Technology and Systems
