Adidas Is Going to Space, on the ISS, Where They'll Do Space Shoe Stuff

Its patented Boost material is getting, yes, a new kind of boost.

Shoe the Moon

A payload is being shot up to the ISS in early March on a SpaceX Dragon rocket. Among the contents of this extraterrestrial delivery? A massive expansion to the station in the form of an exterior facility, shower technology for a study on water droplets in space, 3D printing experiments, human heart cell experiments, and... well, a package from legendary German sneaker company Adidas.

Shoe Fly

The Adidas shipment is going to contain a package of pellets used for the midsole of its Boost shoes. By monitoring the pellets with a highspeed camera as they're compressed into the midsole, the experiment aims to gain insight into how the pellets actually move as they're being formed into a single material — something the company believes it'll be able to understand better in a zero-gravity environment.

Space Jams

Adidas claims that once the footage and the materials make it back home, they'll be inspected to learn more about "what it takes to create truly out-of-this-world running technology" (groan). The shoe company also vaguely alludes to more collaborative efforts with NASA, which is great and all. But the question remains: When will they be able to design a shoe as fundamentally cool as the Mars Yard 2, at, like, a fractional amount of the price? Right. Good luck with that one.

READ MORE: Improving Shoes, Showers, 3D Printing: Research Launching to the Space Station [NASA]

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