Innovative biosensor for testing the astronaut health during spaceflight

Space is an extreme environment for humans. Spaceflight affects living systems through damages due to high-energy cosmic rays, microgravity, hostile and closed environment. The astronauts are exposed to all of these serious hazards, so they are subjected to psycho-physical stress and possible inflammatory states. The knowledge gained in the human spaceflight field has highlighted the importance of frequent monitoring of astronaut’s health. Early diagnoses and in situ medical interventions could mitigate the risk of health consequences induced by space exposure. In this scenario, the biosensor diagnostic devices offer the necessary analytical performance to observe the development of the astronaut conditions. On the other hand, a biosensor could have a limit of detection too high to appreciate the initial pathological status. Hereby, we propose an innovative biosensor for detecting highly diluted biomarkers at picogram level by using the pyro-electrohydrodynamic jet (p-jet) system. Our biosensor has already been tested with various biomolecules, (i.e. Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers), which have given exciting feedback. In the context of long-term human missions, our revolutionary approach could be extremely useful to monitor the astronaut health.