The Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) at Baylor College of Medicine announced today the selection of two projects aimed at analyzing advanced engineering and synthetic biology solutions for long-duration, deep space human missions. Future deep space missions will require substantial amounts of food, medication, and other consumables to support years-long journeys. Due to the distance from Earth and the inability to resupply, these missions must either carry all necessary consumables or have the capability to produce them en route.
The selected projects from TRISH’s recent funding opportunity, "Figures of Merit: How to get Biology Engineered for Exploration of Space," will quantify the resources needed to implement engineering biology solutions that could support crew health and performance during spaceflight.
“Advancing our capability to produce food, medication, and other consumables during a mission without requiring consistent resupply from Earth is essential to enable future long-duration missions to Mars and beyond,” said Dr. Rihana Bokhari, TRISH acting chief scientific officer and assistant professor with the Center for Space Medicine at Baylor. “Many innovations in the production of food, medicine, and nutrition have been developed over the years. To implement these engineering and synthetic biology solutions during space travel, we need to understand what it will cost to do so with limited resources of mass, power, volume and time.”
Scientists have developed biologically engineered solutions including enhanced plants, supplemental nutrients, and on-demand pharmaceuticals to address spaceflight risks and constraints. Additionally, bio-engineered solutions could contribute to life support systems by using plants and microbes to clean air and recycle waste products. While these approaches might work on Earth, resources are significantly limited in space. Each potential solution has its own requirements—mass, power, volume—and crew member/production time that must be weighed against other systems in the spacecraft. Understanding these "figures of merit" (FOMs) enables mission planners to make strategic decisions about which bio-engineered solutions should be implemented for future space travel.
Analysis of potential biologically engineered solutions FOMs has been limited thus far. The selected projects will quantify the requirements for implementing their solution in space and provide key metrics to TRISH and NASA. The selected projects are:
- Figures of Merit for Space-Based Production of a Therapeutic in Plants
- Principal Investigator: Karen McDonald, Ph.D.
- Institution: University of California, Davis
- Defining the Figures of Merit for an On-demand Astropharmacy
- Principal Investigator: Lynn Rothschild, Ph.D.
- Institution: NASA Ames Research Center
TRISH is an applied space health research catalyst empowered by NASA's Human Research Program to solve challenges related to human deep space exploration. Led by Baylor College of Medicine's Center for Space Medicine, TRISH leverages partnerships with Caltech and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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