Just like athletes, astronauts train before, during and after their space flight to stay physically fit and healthy. In this game, students train like astronauts to test and improve their agility.
Agility is the ability to quickly change direction while maintaining body control. You need to be agile when doing activities like basketball, where you change direction quickly to run around your opponents, while maintaining your speed and balance.
Astronauts lose agility over time because they work in a microgravity environment where don’t need to change direction quickly. By training to regain their agility, they avoid injury by making sure they can respond quickly to the things happening around them.
Using the obstacle course in this activity, you can time yourself to test your agility, and then practice it again and again to improve your time.
This and other games were designed by NASA to simulate the types of physical challenges astronauts face while travelling in space.
