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Vivaldi is an experiment investigating dry immersion, a technique that seems to closely simulate microgravity’s impacts on the body. Though dry immersion is more commonly used by Russian researchers, the ESA SciSpacE team is testing to see just how similar it is to actual spaceflight.

Through Vivaldi, they hope to identify specifically what changes happen to the body during weightlessness, how long those changes take to happen, and how they compare to both spaceflight and other ground-based microgravity analogues.

The first leg of this experiment, Vivaldi I, featured an all-female group of participants, to fill a gap in existing research. Alongside Vivaldi II, the second leg involving male participants, the data gathered will give researchers an idea of what strains microgravity places on astronauts of any sex, so that widely effective mitigation approaches can be designed.