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Author: Sezen Bakan, University of Adelaide
The University of Adelaide is sending pills to the International Space Station (ISS) to determine whether it is possible to produce drugs in space for longer-term space missions.
Planned to be launched on Sunday, February 21st from NASA's Wallops, Virginia, the pills will contain ibuprofen and vitamin C as active ingredients, as well as excipients that can be found on the surface of the moon. These include silicon dioxide, magnesium silicate (talc) and calcium phosphate.
University of Adelaide professor and research director of the Andy Thomas Space Resource Center, Volker Hessel, said the project is the first step towards "autonomous in-vehicle pharmaceuticals."
The 60 pills will be packaged in blister packs and will be placed outside the International Space Station for six months to understand how exposure to microgravity and space radiation affects the stability of the tablet formulation.
"Radiation protection was incorporated into the design of the pill," Hessel said.
"By changing the interaction between ingredients and drugs, we will be able to examine how these changes affect their stability."
Space technology companies Alpha Space and Space Tango have partnered with the University of Adelaide to send these pills into space. The Alpha Space Materials International Space Station Experimental Platform, located outside the International Space Station, will host the experiment.
The university partnered with Space Tango to send the first batch of pills to the International Space Station in October 2020. These pills are currently being exposed to the environment inside the space station.
Currently, astronauts living in space 250 miles from the Earth’s surface can obtain supplies of medicines through commercial supply missions.
However, because companies want to go further into space, such as a three-year trip to Mars, frequent resupply missions may not be possible. Most commercially available prepackaged medicines have an average shelf life of two years and may expire during these long-distance trips.
Although extending the shelf life of drugs is an option, future astronauts will also face issues such as storage capacity and types of drugs.
The ability to produce drugs in space and on-demand may be the best solution to these two challenges.
"Collecting data on drug stability for long-term space missions...allows us to generate highly innovative data sets that will help guide future on-orbit and on-demand drug production," Hessel said.
The mission will be launched at 4:06 am Eastern Time and can be broadcast live on NASA TV. Explore the picture further: A planet far away from home provided by the University of Adelaide-enable-longer-space-missions.html This document is protected by copyright. Except for any fair transaction for private learning or research purposes, no part may be copied without written permission. The content is for reference only.
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