Microsystems Seminar
Antonio Ricco
Chief Technologist, Small Payloads and Instrumentation
NASA Ames Research Center
Abstract
We develop miniaturized integrated bio/analytical instruments and platforms to conduct economical, frequent, autonomous life science experiments in outer space. The technologies represented by several of our recent 5-kg “free-flyer” small-satellite missions are the basis of a rapidly growing suite of miniaturized biologically- and chemically-oriented instrumentation now enabling a new generation of in-situ space science experiments. Over the past 7 years, our missions have included studies of space-environment-related changes in gene expression, drug dose response, microbial longevity and metabolism, and the degradation of biomarker molecules. The science and technology of one of these missions, the O/OREOS (Organism/Organic Response to Orbital Stress) Nanosatellite, will be described in the context of conducting biological and chemical experiments in outer space using miniaturized integrated systems.
