What MEK is
MEK lets astronauts feel weightlessness on dry land, so they can practise work in space without a pool.
It is a full body haptic platform from Ethereal Matter. Motorized arms and foot plates push back on the trainee’s hands, arms and feet, so a hatch, a handrail or a tool feels the way it would in orbit.
What it means: one machine can train both kinds of work, for many more people, without the pool. As commercial stations and lunar missions grow the number of people going to space, that is the bottleneck MEK removes.
NBL. A trainee in a training EMU waits to start a session in the water. Image: NASA / James Blair
Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. The pool at Johnson Space Center where spacewalks are rehearsed today. Image: NASA
MEK. Full body force feedback on dry land. Image: Ethereal Matter
The platform
EVA motion training
Spacewalk motion is simulated by moving the scene relative to the trainee’s hand and arm forces. Suit resistance and the trainee’s inertia are added to every movement, so the trainee can travel along rails or any part of the ISS and learn the structure by touch.
Mass without gravity
Free-floating objects carry mass and inertia but no weight, which is hard to recreate on Earth. Drag, bias, velocity caps and inertia can each be tuned, so the same session can be set for orbit, the Moon or Mars.
Active armatures
Motor-controlled armatures cover the full human range of arm motion. They generate force, guide motion, apply resistance and simulate physics-driven movement, with active foot platforms underneath.
Gimbal grip
The grip rotates about the center of the hand for a natural, safe force. Deadman switches, a grab trigger, a pause button, vibration haptics and load cells on every inbound and outbound force.
Motion analytics
Motion capture builds an inference model that drives the armatures and stores precise motion data for analysis, training and progress monitoring.
Digital assets and avatars
Scenes are built from CAD models or rigged assets such as robotic arms. Trainees choose a specific suit model, with its resistance, helmet field of view and lighting, so the real suit feels familiar.