An Experimental Surgical Robot Is Headed to The International Space Station



For the first time in more than 50 years, NASA and other space agencies will soon fly people beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

But unlike the Apollo era, future trips will involve people visiting Mars and spending a lot of time on the Moon (with a few months of surface operations in between).

In addition, LEO and cis-Lunar space are expected to be commercialized, which would allow millions of people to live in space habitats and surface towns far from Earth.

This poses a number of difficulties, one of which is the possible lack of qualified medical professionals available to conduct potentially life-saving operations on the sick and injured.

The Miniaturized In-Vivo Robotic Assistant was created by Professor Shane Farritor and his colleagues at the University of Nebraska-(UNL) Lincoln's Nebraska Innovation Campus (NIC) to solve this (MIRA).

This transportable, miniature robotic-assisted surgery (RAS) platform will be launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2024 for a test voyage to see if it can carry out surgical procedures there.

Farritor, who teaches engineering at the University of Nebraska and is the David and Nancy Lederer Professor of Engineering, majored in robotics at MIT. He supported NASA's Mars Exploration Rover (MER) program while working at the NASA Kennedy Space Center, Goddard Space Flight Center, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

This included developing the motion planning for the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers, specifying their assembly, and creating a method for determining the direction of movement of the rover using its Sun detectors.

He co-founded Virtual Incision, a startup business located at the NIC, in 2006 with Dmitry Oleynikov, a former professor of surgery at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC).

Farritor received the Faculty IP Innovation and Commercialization Award in April 2022, which was given out by the University of Nebraska for intellectual property.

The MIRA robotic surgical suite, which has generated over US$100 million in venture finance, has been under development by Farritor, Oleynikov, and their collaborators for about 20 years.

In order to assist engineers and roboticists at the NIC in getting it ready for its test aboard the ISS, NASA has granted Virtual Incision a $100,000 grant via the US Department of Energy's (DoE) Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).

MIRA has two benefits over traditional robotic surgical suites. First, it enables surgeons to undertake minimally invasive procedures since its tools may be placed through small incisions (such as abdominal surgery and colon resections).

Second, the technology may enable telemedicine, which would let doctors treat patients in places that are distant from a hospital by performing surgeries remotely. On Earth, this technology already enables doctors to help patients in remote areas where services are hard to come by.

The MIRA technology, on the other hand, has the extra advantage of carrying out surgical procedures on its own. As a result, astronauts stationed on the Moon and Mars might get medical treatment without the assistance of a human surgeon.

In a recent press release, Virtual Incision's CEO, John Murphy, stated:

With the aim of enabling RAS in every operating theatre on the world, the Virtual Incision MIRA platform was created to offer the strength of a mainframe robotic-assisted surgery system in a little size.

The space station will be used by NASA to demonstrate how MIRA can make surgery available even in the most remote locations.

In order to prepare MIRA for use on the ISS, Farritor will collaborate with engineering graduate student Rachael Wagner throughout the course of the following year. After obtaining her bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, Wagner began working at Farritor as an undergraduate and joined Virtual Incision in 2018.

In order to do this, software will need to be written, MIRA will need to be configured to fit inside an experiment locker, and the device will need to be tested to make sure it is durable enough to survive being launched onboard a rocket and will perform as required in space.

As part of a clinical research with an IDE from the US Food and Drug Administration, MIRA successfully completed its first remote surgery in August 2021. (FDA).

Right hemicolectomy, or the removal of one-half of the colon, was the treatment, carried out by Dr. Michael A. Jobst at the Bryan Medical Center in Lincoln, Nebraska. It was completed by a single naval incision.

The MIRA platform is a genuine breakthrough platform for general surgery, and being the first surgeon in the world to use the device is quite satisfying, according to Dr. Jobst.

The patient is healing well, and the treatment proceeded without a hitch. I'm eager to help provide the foundation for more patient access to robotically assisted surgery, which has a number of obvious advantages.

In a different experiment, retired NASA astronaut and former astronaut Clayton Anderson directed MIRA from the Johnson Space Center to carry out surgical-like activities in an operating room at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, which is located 900 miles (1450 kilometers) away.

MIRA will function independently and without assistance from a controller during its next test aboard the ISS. The robot will push metal rings down a wire and cut tautly stretched rubber bands (simulating skin) as part of this test (simulating delicate operations).

In a Nebraska News release, Wagner stated that "these simulations are incredibly essential because of all the data we will acquire throughout the testing."

In order to save bandwidth on the space station's communications system and reduce the amount of time astronauts are required to participate in the experiment, this test will be the robot's most independent operation to yet.

The objective of this mission is to improve the robot's performance in zero gravity, not to exhibit the robot's limited autonomy. These tests will aid in the technology's validation for upcoming long-duration missions in and beyond of LEO.

"NASA has big aspirations for long-duration space flight, and it's crucial to evaluate the capabilities of technologies that may be helpful during missions measured in months and years," said Farritor.

"We are happy with MIRA's success thus far in clinical studies, as it continues to push the limits of what is feasible in RAS. We're eager to go one step further and contribute to the identification of potential future developments when space flight becomes a more practical option for people.

Humans will need to be as self-sufficient as they can be when they move away from Earth. Resupply missions, as well as flying medical personnel to and from the Moon, Mars, and other sites in deep space, are impracticable.

This implies that they will need to offer necessary services like medical care and surgery in addition to being able to grow their own food, use local resources to satisfy their requirements (ISRU), rely on bioregenerative life support systems, and generate power locally.

Universe Today 

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