Space Exploration and Travel, Future Technologies for Inflight Monitoring and Diagnostics

In the NASA twins study, most of the analysis was performed on Earth with preserved samples taken from one of the twins; this is a recurrent practice that allows understanding any particular inflight risks; however, it limits the capacity of response on site.

“In the NASA twins study, most of the analysis was performed on Earth with preserved samples taken from one of the twins; this is a recurrent practice that allow to understand any particular inflight risks; however, it limits the capacity of response on site5,119.”

Direct inflight analysis of antioxidant levels in body fluids is difficult to perform due to the lack of equipment and reagents on board of spaceships and ISS.

“Even if direct inflight analysis of antioxidant levels in body fluids could be useful, they are difficult to perform due to the lack of equipment and reagents on board of spaceships and ISS119.”

New generation of automated and miniaturized machines that use microfluidic technology, on-chip DNA amplification, and reverse transcriptase-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) could provide on-board capacity to measure ROS and endogenous antioxidant production by routine mRNA analysis.

“New generation of automated and miniaturized machines that use microfluidic technology, on-chip DNA amplification, and reverse transcriptase–quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) could provide the on-board capacity to measure ROS and endogenous antioxidant production by routine mRNA analysis119.”