i remember saying in the letter, you know, you people make robots for very unusual environments. reporter: mcdonald detweiler and associates knows all about building robots for extreme environments. they have worked with nasa and the canadian space agency since the 1970s, and they built the canada arm 2, the robotic arm on the international space station. the aerospace engineers decided to adapt that same technology for dr. sutherland s surgical robot. but building a robot that could function inside an mri machine in the operating room was a new challenge, even for the space engineers. one of the absolute requirements was that wherever we control this robot, which we thought about outside the operating room, controlling the robot inside the operating room, that place has to recreate the sight, the sound and the touch of surgery. we want this robot to feel.
literally dream about. reporter: november 27th, 2014, thanksgiving on the international space station. american astronaut butch wilmore tapes a special message posted on the nasa youtube page. and of course thanksgiving is always about food as well. we share special meals and this is smoked turkey, so i m going to have some smoked turkey. this here is corn bread dressing. rehydrate that, that s going to be mighty tasty. so this is the kitchen? this is the kitchen for space food. reporter: providing that taste of home is maya cooper s job. as one of nasa s food scientists here at the johnson space center in houston, she spends all her days thinking about what the astronauts on iss are eating. she invited me here to nasa s kitchen and tasting lab for a closer look at the astronauts
we ve added. right. double. that s pretty good, huh? that is good. they would feel that? it feels just like that. that s great. reporter: the two main goals for this machine are bone and muscle health. in zero gravity, there s no weight pushing down on your bones, making them weaker. the astronauts use this to prevent bone and muscle loss. are they pretty into it? most of them are very into it. they have an idea that this is what s going to keep them from becoming brittle or turning into jello when they come back, so they understand the importance of these machines, all three of them, and really appreciate what we re trying to do for them. reporter: our last stop is the cycle, the third piece of nasa s exercise program. of course in space it would look a little different. i find this really fascinating. if i was doing this in space, i wouldn t need handlebars, i couldn t need these and i wouldn t need a seat.
benefitting us back here on earth. that effect of floating around causes changes in the body that look a lot like all the bad things that happen as you get older. your bones start breaking down, your muscles start breaking down, your heart shrinks, fluids shift around in your body. that s fascinating. it sounds like what you re saying is this environment kind of accelerates aging for a period of time. it can be reversed when you get back down toe earth, but the ida that you can accelerate aging, you can test things and see them more quickly? yeah. you can see them naturally resers. many times necessity is the mother of invention, especially in space. a long way from the nearest hospital, nasa discovered a way to do long distance ultrasound. on the space station, the crew members have to take care of each other and we don t always have a doctor on board and we don t have an x-ray machine, but we do have an ultrasound. and so a group from henry ford
show you some very cool pictures of this from australia. it s not going to be visible to north america, but we have high powered telescopes in indonesia and awes as, could have very cool pictures and we hope to bring you those, megyn about 21 minutes from right now. unless it changes directions and then we ll reevaluate. megyn: the geniuses at nasa assure us that s not happening, trace, that we don t need to worry, we don t need to duck and cover. don t need to kiss our rear ends goodbye, we can sit and marvel in the miracle of space. let s hope they re right. thank you. for a little more context how close 17,000 miles is, how far away it is from us. ta numbers. the asteroid will come about 5,000 miles closer to the earth than some communication satellites. it will be 1/14 of the distance of the earth and moon. the moon is farther away this thing will be, and travelling