Supporting Astronaut Mental and Physical Fitness with VIVE Focus 3 with Andreas Mogensen

Join us for an exclusive look at how the VIVE Focus 3 is supporting astronauts’s mental well-being and enhancing exercise routine on the International Space Station (ISS)! First deployed for mental health support, European Space Agency’s Andreas Mogensen participated in VR therapy sessions on the VIVE Focus 3, which gave him a break from the isolating, high stress environment of the ISS. The VR therapy included 360° videos of serene and captivating scenes that Mogensen hand picked. The mission then expanded to include physical well-being, with Mogensen wearing the VIVE Focus 3 and immersing himself in a VR experience built by the Danish Aerospace Company during his required 2 hours of cycling a day. Mogensen discusses his first-hand experience using the VIVE Focus 3 on the ISS and shares a glimpse of what he’s experiencing both in and out of the headset on the ISS.

Two of the experiments that I’m performing during my mission on board the International Space Station involves the use of a virtual reality headset the first experiment is concerned with mental health or psychological well-being we astronauts on board the space station are living in a very confined artificial laboratory

Like environment it’s very sterile it’s very cold and we don’t have access to Nature and that affects our psychological well being personally I really miss being able to step outside to feel the breeze to feel the wind to feel the warmth of the sun to smell the

Leaves the grass and the flowers and even though the virtual reality headset doesn’t let me do that I still get a feeling of being in nature when I wear it I have five different uh videos on this headset from various scenes uh in nature including a sun set a day at the

Beach a mountain path and a summer’s day next to a river and when I put on the virtual reality headset I can hear the wind rustling through the leaves hear the birds singing I can almost feel the warmth of the Sun and I have to be honest I didn’t actually expect it would

Make much of a difference but I found that I love wearing this headset it takes me into nature it makes me feel like like I’m out in nature that I’m outside of the space station away from this artificial environment and it really it de-stresses me it makes me relax it

Takes away a lot of the daily stress um and just allows me to re-energize just to to kind of relax uh you know to catch my breath to feel like I’m I’m back on the earth uh um it’s it’s a really great way to get away from this artificial environment on

Board the space station uh you know for for long duration missions it makes a huge uh difference the second experiment uh that involves the use of this virtual reality headset is um an experiment that combines the headset with the bicycle our station or bicycle on board to space

Station uh what we call cus and this is another terrific experiment uh because when I combine the headset with our bicycle it allows me to cycle different routs in Denmark H and it’s actually one of my favorite things to do on board the space station now I have

Five different routs uh from Denmark on this headset including a mountain bik path through the woods a route along the beach one in the countryside and one through Copenhagen and one run through uh another large city called in Denmark what’s even better is that the roots in this headset um are integrated

Into the loading mechanism for this bicycle and so when I’m for example cycling through uh the forest on a mountain bike path the loads that I’m feeling while exercising matches what I see so when I’m going uphill the loads uh are increased and when I go downhill

The loads are decreased and that way I actually feel like I’m uh bicycling through the woods on a mountain bike path um and it’s really great it’s so motivating and at the same time I feel like I’m out in nature uh enjoying a nice uh bike rout U through the woods

For along the beach and it’s actually become one of my favorite things to do on board space station is to cycle while we the virtual reality head set now one of the challenges of using the virtual reality headset in space is that the headset doesn’t know where the

Horizon is it can’t sense gravity uh but that’s been solved using uh one of the controllers which serves as an anchor point and by me tilting it pivoting it uh adjusting its position I can tell the headset where the Horizon is and that lets me uh cycle in a natural way and

Also lets me uh just use a headset in a in a very natural way so that it doesn’t get affected by this lack of gravity on bordon Space Station two of my favorite experiments that allow me to relax and that allow me to feel like I’m back on the earth in nature