The first ever space-to-Earth "handshake" in human history is scheduled to happen Wednesday evening—though for the moment it's just between two joysticks.

"What we're doing today for the first time ever is sending real-time data from from a robotic joystick on the ground to a guy in space, who will receive force feedback along with video," André Schiele, the head of European Space Agency (ESA) telerobotics and haptics laboratory, told me over the phone. "It's the first interactive space-to-Earth experiment in human history."