Aerospace Medicine and Rehabilitation Laboratory

The Aerospace Medicine and Rehabilitation Laboratory at Northumbria University is a world-leading centre dedicated to understanding how the space environment affects the human body and to developing innovative countermeasures that protect astronaut health during and after spaceflight missions.

Founded in 2015, the lab brings together expertise in aerospace medicine, human and applied physiology, biomechanics, psychology, and rehabilitation and biomedical science to address one of humanity’s greatest challenges: enabling people to live and work healthily beyond Earth. Our research explores how the human body adapts to microgravity and partial gravity, the underpinning mechanisms, and how novel exercise-based interventions can maintain physical function and accelerate recovery.

Through close collaboration with ESA, NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, and the UK Space Agency, private spaceflight companies such as SpaceX and Axiom Space, as well as with leading industry partners such as Western Clinical Engineering, Delfi Medical Innovations Inc., and Kayser Space Ltd, the lab is pioneering new technologies with applications in both spaceflight and terrestrial healthcare.

The Aerospace Medicine and Rehabilitation Laboratory is home to the Variable Gravity Suspension System (VGSS) — a globally unique analogue platform capable of simulating micro- and hypo-gravity conditions — and our technologies are already flying in orbit, including the Personalised Tourniquet System for Spaceflight (PTSS) launched aboard SpaceX’s FRAM2 mission in 2025.The lab’s work contributes to Northumbria University’s Space Research Peak of Excellence, combining academic leadership with commercial translation to create dual-use innovations that benefit both astronauts and humans on Earth.