Life science equipment

Human space exploration – physiology and personal monitoring

Human space exploration requires adequate technologies that ensure the astronaut’s safety and enable continuous monitoring of physiological parameters, but also integrated solutions that actively support overall physiological well-being. In addition, access to autonomous medical support systems and onboard diagnostic tools allows timely intervention in case of health issues.

Kayser developed solutions to support human space exploration in different ways. It exploited lab-on-chip technology to monitor stress hormones and biomarkers in the astronaut saliva, developed sampling kits to collect blood and saliva to analyze the immune system status during long-term missions, and tools for the measurement of muscle strength or aimed to quantify the joint torque, muscle forces, and bone stresses that occur during exercise in microgravity, as well as to quantify adaptations in performance that may occur throughout a long-duration spaceflight mission.

Moreover, wearable instruments for real-time crew personal monitoring from radiation exposure were designed and tested onboard ISS.

Human space exploration – environmental monitoring, waste recycling, and bioregenerative life support systems

In the context of performing human activities beyond Earth, it is of paramount importance to ensure to the astronauts tools and devices to monitor environmental conditions such as airborne pathogens, to properly dispose waste generated by the daily human activity and perhaps making use of such waste in bioregenerative life support systems - all by-products generated by human metabolism and onboard activities that are no longer directly usable in their original form but can be processed and recycled into essential resources. Kayser has designed and developed ground devices to sustain future astronaut activity by monitoring airborne pathogens and providing compaction and microbiological inhibition of organic waste produced by the crew.

Bio-analytical platforms for space exploration missions

Scientific missions related to space exploration missions, either in the space environment or on other planets of our solar system aim at evaluating the effects of microgravity and ionizing radiation on organisms or aim at identifying putative biomarkers precursors of extant or extinct life. For such scientific missions Kayser is developing bio-analytical platforms based on lab-on-chip technology or of miniaturized fluorescent microscopes to study the behavior of microorganisms to the space environment, and by testing countermeasures to tackle the radiation damage.