Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

We’ve all seen pictures of the clean rooms where NASA builds the various vehicles and instruments destined for space travel. Besides ensuring they function properly the extra precaution also helps cut down on unwanted microorganisms that can be bad for both the astronauts and the spacecraft. But as Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park put it; “life finds a way” and in this case it even manages to hitch a ride off our planet.

After a nasty incident aboard the spacestation Mir involving a microorganism infected floating mass of water hidden behind a panel NASA figured the astronauts could use some way to detect these unwanted stowaways. This is where the ‘Lab-On-a-Chip Application Development Portable Test System’ or LOCAD-PTS comes in. It’s a handheld device capable of detecting the presence of bacteria or fungi on a surface within minutes without the need for having cultures developed in a lab. At the moment a rather limited version of the LOCAD-PTS is being tested aboard the ISS but later this year a more advanced version capable of detecting 130 specific microorganisms will begin testing in the Arctic.

[ Preventing "Sick" Spaceships ] VIA [ Crave ]