Novel Fluid Preservation System, Phase I

Significant non-NASA commercial applications of the FPS are expected. Its ability to preserve any organic fluid at room temperature would enable forensic criminal investigators, relief personnel working in remote locations of epidemic/pandemic diseases, military personnel and environmental researches to safely collect and preserve samples in their native form without the need for bulky and power hungry freezers or potentially sample damaging chemical kits. As part of its ongoing effort to understand the impact of space flight on humans, especially in preparation for future manned missions to Mars, NASA needs to collect and store body fluid samples of its astronauts during missions in order to quantify, among other things, the impact of radiation and microgravity on humans. Commercially available methods include either freezing the collected body fluids or using chemical preservation kits. While launching freezers results in significant payload costs, they alos restrict the amount of samples that can be stored. Chemical kits are known to produce contaminants that could foul the biomarkers that NASA is interested in. The proposed FPS can preserve body fluids without the need for any refrigeration or chemical kits enabling a lower cost and more accurate solution to sample preservation. More »