One Step Closer to Iron Man
The Johnson Space Center in Houston and Tony Starks' Cliffside mansion in Malibu are both hubs of innovation, one real and one fictional. But with NASA's newest creation, the X1 Exoskeleton, reality appears to be following fiction.
The 57 pound, 10 joint exoskeleton resembles a real life Iron Man suit, capable of increasing a humans own physical abilities. It's being developed to keep astronauts muscles active while they're in space, where the weightless environment can cause muscles to lose their strength, but during their research NASA realized the X1 could also help paraplegics walks on earth.
The bodysuit is still in the prototype stages and won't be accompanying Scott Kelly, Gabby Giffords brother in law, who just volunteered to spend an entire year in space studying how the human body reacts to long term exposure to weightlessness.
But the X1 Exoskeleton is being tested on paraplegics here on earth, and the results so far have been promising. To learn more we spoke with NASA engineers Shelley Rea and Chris Beck who are working on the project.
