A powerful assistant for surgery, coming from the International Space Station?

Aerospace technology is inseparable from medical health. So, what medical achievements has aerospace technology made? What new aerospace + medical technologies are worth looking forward to in the future?

Astronauts are monitoring the blood vessel cultivation experiment

In 1970, Sister Yukenda from Zambia wrote to NASA, asking: "There are still so many children on Earth who don't have enough food to eat, how can NASA be willing to spend billions of dollars on a project far away on Mars?" Then NASA's researchers replied to her: Space exploration not only provides humans with a mirror to examine themselves, it can also bring us new technologies, new challenges and enterprising spirit, as well as an optimistic and confident attitude when facing severe real problems.

Kenyan nuns send letter to NASA

Today, diapers, concentrated juice, sunglasses, CT scans, and water purifiers that we often use in our daily lives all originated from the needs and development of aerospace technology. With the development of medical technology, the cross-integration of clinical medicine, medical devices, and science and engineering disciplines has become one of the main directions of medical innovation. As a special type of medicine, aerospace medicine plays an important role in the development of manned spaceflight, and the development of aerospace medicine has also greatly promoted the development of medical technology as a whole. Many of the methods, drugs, and equipment used by aerospace medicine to protect the health of astronauts have been used to solve related health problems of the general population.

Medical and biological research is the focus of current space experiments and the first choice for the International Space Station to find partners. In the scientific research projects of the United States and Russia in the International Space Station laboratory module, medical and biological research accounted for 43% and 32% respectively. Bioengineering is also another key area, such as the research and preparation of biological materials with potential application value in medicine, biology and pharmacology, such as protein crystals in microorganisms, bacteria, plant cells and animal embryos.

What medical devices and instruments in our daily lives come from aerospace technology?

With different ground application scenarios, many space technologies have been transformed into different drugs and medical devices, bringing many conveniences to the diagnosis and treatment of human diseases. In a weightless environment, astronauts face the risk of osteoporosis, so astronauts need to do physical exercise every day and take a small amount of bisphosphonates every week. Later, it was discovered that similar drugs also benefit middle-aged and elderly people at risk of osteoporosis.

Translucent polycrystalline alumina is a high-strength, high-transparency ceramic material that was originally used in the aerospace field. Later, researchers discovered that this material could be used in the field of transparent braces. Now it has become the most successful material for orthodontic products.

Orthodontic materials

The robotic arm of the International Space Station is a powerful helper for carrying heavy objects, docking spacecraft and daily maintenance work on the International Space Station. It can assist or replace astronauts in difficult and dangerous tasks. Inspired by this technology, people have developed robotic arms in the medical field for precision operations such as removing brain tumors, with a level of accuracy and professionalism that is no less than that of experienced surgeons.

Canada robotic arm

The weightless environment in space changes the way human eyes move and perceive movement. Astronauts spend a long time in space and often cannot flexibly control their eyes to look where they want to look like on the ground. High-tech eye trackers solve this problem well. Eye trackers are now also used in laser eye correction surgery to ensure the accurate positioning of the laser beam, to achieve real-time and accurate tracking of the patient's eyes, and to accurately direct the laser scalpel without the intervention of the surgeon.

When we breathe, we release some nitric oxide particles. When a person's airways are inflamed, the amount of nitric oxide in the exhaled air increases. In order to detect potential inflammation in astronauts, ESA has developed an instrument that can accurately measure the amount of nitric oxide. This technology has been used to diagnose and treat asthma patients.

Astronauts test breathalyzer

The weightless environment of space increases the risk of astronauts suffering from kidney stones. Once kidney stones form in space, they can induce infection and complications, threatening the health of astronauts and affecting the completion of space missions. NASA has developed a handheld ultrasonic device that can detect, move, and crush stones, making them easier to pass out of the body. This technology has brought good news to many kidney stone patients on Earth.

Water resources in space are extremely precious, so researchers have developed efficient and safe water purification and recycling technology. This technology can also be used to remove toxic waste from dialysis fluid, thus giving birth to dialysis machines, which have helped treat many seriously ill patients.

Over the past decade, a group of scientists has tracked astronauts to study how they grasp objects in space. Through the data of astronauts' practice of grasping small objects, they analyzed how life in a weightless environment affects their grasping ability. When conducting dexterity test experiments, astronauts hold a special sensor in their hands, open their eyes, and then close them to evaluate how the body adapts to an environment without up or down. These experimental results help researchers design more dexterous prostheses for people with disabilities.

What other aerospace technology research is worth looking forward to in the future?

Stem cell biology is one of the most eye-catching research fields in the 21st century and is an upstream discipline in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine research. The important function of stem cells is to maintain and control the regenerative ability of cells. They have the ability to self-renew and replicate and have multi-differentiation potential, and can differentiate into a variety of tissue cell types. Scientists have used aerospace technology to analyze the proliferation and differentiation of stem cells in the weightless environment of space, and to study how to use stem cells for large-scale amplification and tissue engineering construction under the unique conditions of microgravity in space.

Foreign scientists are also preparing to develop artificial miniature hearts in space based on human stem cells using 3D bioprinting technology. These heart tissue structures will then be sent to the International Space Station to gain a deeper understanding of how microgravity affects the function of the human heart. Researchers hope that this will help to better understand heart atrophy, a reduction and weakening of heart tissue that makes it difficult to pump blood to the body. The weightless environment can cause such problems, and can well simulate syncope, arrhythmia, valvular heart disease, and even heart failure caused by weak myocardium. Heart atrophy and related diseases are one of the important topics in the current medical community. People with diabetes, muscular dystrophy and cancer, as well as diseases such as sepsis and congestive heart failure, often experience heart dysfunction and tissue damage.

3D bioprinter can print miniature artificial hearts

Chinese scientists are no less impressive. In April 2017, my country's Tianzhou-1 cargo spacecraft successfully docked with the Tiangong-2 space laboratory, not only completing the delivery mission, but also carrying a number of scientific experiments. One of the experiments is the "Embryonic Stem Cell Culture Experiment in Microgravity Environment", which uses ordinary photosynthetic fluorescence microscopy to observe the proliferation and differentiation process of stem cells in space, and through the changes in the intensity of cell fluorescence signals and the characteristics of cell morphological changes, it determines the self-renewal and cell differentiation of mouse embryonic stem cells in the weightless environment of space.

In addition, due to the effect of gravity on Earth, cells generally sink to the bottom of the culture dish, and it is difficult for them to self-organize and form structures like blood vessels like cells in the human body. Through experiments, scientists have found that in a weightless environment, cells in blood vessels organize themselves in a similar way to cells in the human body, forming simple three-dimensional structures. Scientists say that these tubular aggregates are like primitive blood vessels, which has never been achieved before culturing cells on Earth. If artificial blood vessels can be cultivated from human cells, it will have great potential for treating a variety of diseases. Not only can they be used in surgery to help patients who need transplants replace damaged blood vessels, but they can also enhance our understanding of a range of vascular-related diseases and the effects of weightlessness on the human body.

ESA's device for growing blood vessels on the International Space Station

In the past, the International Space Station undertook most of the space experiment missions, and in the future, China's own space station will also be launched. It is planned to deploy 16 scientific experiment cabinets in the sealed cabin, an extravehicular exposure experiment platform, and a co-orbital flight experiment cabin, which can support the implementation of scientific research and application projects in astronomy, life sciences, biotechnology, aerospace medicine, space physics, etc. On June 12, 2019, the results of the first batch of international cooperation projects for space science experiments on the Chinese space station were officially announced. A total of 9 projects from 17 countries and 23 entities were successfully selected, and the contents of the selected projects covered the above-mentioned cutting-edge scientific fields.

As of August 2023, China's space station's aerospace medicine experiment missions will focus on five research directions: research on the impact of long-term weightlessness on astronauts' health and protection technology, research on the impact of space radiation on astronauts' health and protection technology, research on astronaut behavior and capabilities, research on advanced in-orbit monitoring and medical treatment technology, and research on the aerospace application technology of traditional medicine. A total of 49 innovative aerospace medicine experimental studies will be carried out.

For example, a series of on-orbit detection and intervention technologies have been established to provide technical reserves and support for the long-term and healthy stay of astronauts. These technologies are efficient, non-invasive, easy to operate, and wearable, and can also be used for public health. For example, bone loss countermeasures and wearable acupoint stimulators can be used for people with degenerative osteoporosis and muscle atrophy; biorhythm guidance technology can be used to improve and enhance sleep quality; ultrasound-based non-invasive intracranial pressure measurement technology provides important references and references for research in the field of intracranial pressure and other related fields such as high intracranial pressure optic nerve edema. Mental fatigue detection, intervention, intelligent lighting, and rapid alertness improvement technologies can provide technical support for the detection, maintenance, and improvement of the abilities of people working in special environments such as long-term navigation and underground confined spaces.

The station is built for application. The space station operation and development project focuses on both medical and human factors related scientific issues faced by long-term survival in space, as well as cutting-edge hotspots around human health and human capabilities; combined with major national scientific research programs such as the National Brain Science, it systematically conducts basic, forward-looking, and exploratory research to provide theoretical support and technical reserves for the sustainable development of manned spaceflight, while benefiting public health. (The above three paragraphs are reproduced from the China Manned Space Engineering Office)