HNu Photonics is a leading developer of air and ground hardware in the aerospace and defense sector. HNu Photonics’ SCORPIO V division has partnered with NASA to leverage Teledyne FLIR’s machine vision cameras to better understand the effects of spaceflight and microgravity on the human body at the cellular level.

NASA’s Human Research Program (HRP) has been studying how the human body changes in space for the past 50 years. Situations encountered during space travel, whether it’s space radiation or changes in the gravitational field, can have long-term and potentially dangerous effects on the physiology of the human body. 1

As part of its contract with NASA, HNu Photonics is working to provide a variety of microscope solutions for use on the International Space Station (ISS). The researchers will apply what they learn from the microscope experiments to design new equipment and strategies to help astronauts stay healthy during their missions, and long after.

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HNu’s solution, called Mobile SpaceLab (MoSL), is a series of self-sustaining, reusable payloads that automatically perform mammalian cell culture studies in multiple imaging modes, including phase contrast and fluorescence.

Phase contrast is a microscopy technique that adds contrast to a sample that does not have any inherent contrast, or enhances it by staining. The technique is used under white light, and the resulting image is sometimes superimposed as a “channel” (a separate image) with the fluorescence signal “channel” to form a “multi-channel” image. This combination can help observers identify and locate fluorescence. MoSL’s dual microscope utilizes the Teledyne FLIR Blackfly camera to image in both phase-contrast and fluorescent channels.

MoSL enables complex experiments to be carried out on the International Space Station with astronauts on board doing almost nothing.

In particular, MoSL can be experimented in the microgravity conditions of the ISS. Microgravity is the condition in which a person or object appears to have no weight; It has been shown that microgravity can have adverse effects on bone mass, muscle mass, blood pressure and more.

The MoSL experiment aims to understand and manage the effects of microgravity on mammalian cell and tissue culture systems through automated experiments.