This timelapse shows ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen working with Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergei Volkov during the iriss mission to unpack, setup, test and then store the MARES muscle-measurement machine in Europe’s space laboratory Columbus on the International Space Station over three days.
The Muscle Atrophy Research and Exercise System, or MARES for short, is a three-in-one muscle-measurement machine on the International Space Station that monitors astronauts’ muscles as they work out.
Muscle strength decreases during spaceflight and researchers need to know why this happens in order to prepare for long-duration missions and safe space tourism. MARES is an exercise bench that offers detailed information about how muscles behave during spaceflight.
MARES was a large part of Andreas’s ten-day iriss mission to the International Space Station that started 2 September 2015.
Follow Andreas via http://andreasmogensen.esa.int/

Read more about the MARES experiment on the iriss blog.