Technical Problem and Solution

These are exciting times for human space exploration with several countries contemplating and planning manned missions to “Moon, Mars and beyond.” Indeed, space agencies such as NASA, ESA, JAXA and the Chinese Space Agency are planning a series of robotic and manned missions that could culminate in the establishment of permanent habitats on the Moon and possibly Mars. With these ambitious goals in mind, there have been large-scale efforts to design new crew vehicles, as well as powerful boosters and habitats to facilitate interplanetary human spaceflights.

However, lost in all this hardware design and development is the need for improved monitoring of the human body. Space agencies are keenly aware of the risks that need to be mitigated in order to accomplish long-range space exploration (e.g., see NASA’s Bioastronautics Roadmap), funding has often hindered life sciences research, making research in monitoring and countermeasures all the more challenging. Humans on such missions would have to confront microgravity, weak magnetic fields, ionizing radiation and other cosmic hazards. The short stints carried out by astronauts, either aboard the Space Shuttle or on the International Space Station, although taxing health-wise on astronauts, cannot foretell the numerous health hazards involved in interplanetary space travel and exploration. However, the ISS is an invaluable tool as a test bed for conducting research that will benefit long-range space exploration.

In this project workshop, we will discuss the feasibility of creating a CANEUS-sponsored, for-profit entity – CANEUS BIOASTRONAUTICS – dedicated to building a new generation of miniaturized biomedical devices for astronauts. Following our motto “MONITOR, MEASURE, MITIGATE”, we seek to develop technologies and produce new devices that are particularly suited for monitoring and protecting humans from the hazards of spaceflight and space exploration. The first MNT-based biomedical device being proposed for development is the Sensor-on-Chip for human health monitoring via frequent sample extraction and analysis.
The proposed Sensor-on-Chip system for health monitoring consists of fully-integrated microelectronics, microfluidics and biofunctionalized sensors on a single chip format.  The novelty of the proposed SOC system is the use of ink-jet printing  (direct-write lithography) for realizing microfluidic devices on a standard CMOS driver chip. The direct write CMOS-based Sensor-On-Chip is a novel technology developed in the laboratories of the École Polytechnique de Montréal (EPM). Essentially, microfluidic structures are implemented onto a CMOS chip (TSMC 0.18 micron process) during the packaging process [1]. CMOS microelectronics is also used for bio particle detection through embedded capacitive sensors or via Polypyrrole (PPY) biofunctionalized electrodes. PPY is a functionalized (for selectivity) conducting polymer that can transduce a biological signal to an electrical one when binding biomolecules on its surface. In this case, we will use our propriety formulation of polypyrrole micro-deposited onto electrodes to detect glucose, cholesterol and a host of other blood molecules. It can equally be adapted for volatile liquids and gases for environmental sensing.