Novel Microfluidic Instrument for Spacecraft Environmental Monitoring, Phase I

Our novel integrated microfluidics technology has great potential to enhance NASA's current efforts to monitor spacecraft environment. In particular, the microanalytical instrument is capable of performing rapid simultaneous measurements of a variety of toxic contaminants in spacecraft drinking water supply aboard the International Space Station. In addition, the microfluidic technology is naturally suited to such important NASA programs as planetary and small body surface chemistry studies. It also has broad applications including on-chip biosensors, electrochemical sensors, wet-chemistry systems, as well as high pressure micropumps for fluid positioning, mixing, metering, storage, and filtering systems, clinical diagnostics, spacecraft and biosphere environmental monitoring, and toxicology studies. The toxic contaminants potentially present in the water supply aboard the International Space Station are also a serious concern to human health on earth because they are common environmental pollutants present in air, food, drinking water, and soil. The proposed technology therefore can be a powerful analytical tool with significant commercial potential for a wide range of in situ environmental monitoring applications. In addition to environmental monitoring, other commercial devices based on the microfluidics technology envisioned include components for DNA, protein and drug separation and analysis, chemical analysis systems, drug delivery systems, and embedded health monitoring systems. The relative simplicity and unmatched capability of these micro-devices will enable numerous, large-scale commercial markets to be infused with the technology. More »