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Prolonged microgravity exposures induce physiological changes that result in deconditioning of the cardiovascular, neurosensory, and musculoskeletal systems. These changes may have important implications as flight durations lengthen and specific mission tasks place higher demands on crewmembers (e.g., space station construction, extravehicular activity contingencies, emergency egress). Historically, the United States and Russia have incorporated a variety of countermeasures in an effort to maintain human health and performance of crewmembers before, during, and after space flight. The NASA countermeasure strategy is focused on the validation of exercise prescriptions and systems for a variety of flight programs: Space Shuttle, Mir, and International Space Station (ISS).

In preparation for longer duration manned spaceflight onboard the Space Station Freedom, many new challenges face the aerospace medical community. It has been documented that cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, and neurosensory deconditioning result from prolonged exposure to a microgravity environment. These physiological alterations associated with spaceflight must be minimized to guarantee effective in-flight performance, functional return to a 1-g environment, and nominal rate of postflight recovery. In an effort to retard the deleterious effects of space adaptation, NASA has defined requirements for an Exercise Countermeasure Facility (ECF)within the Space Station Crew Health Care System (CHeCS). The application of exercise as a countermeasure to spaceflight-induced deconditioning has been utilized in the past by both the United States and the Soviet space programs.