Surgical Robot In Space Passes Test With Flying Colours
In a test that featured half a dozen surgeons from across the United States, a miniature surgical robot created at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln successfully completed a surgical simulation aboard the International Space Station.
“Tell the astronauts they have six extra surgeons today,” said Yuman Fong, a liver surgeon from the City of Hope Cancer Center in Los Angeles, as he watched a surgeon from Houston guide the surgical robot using hand and foot controls from a console at the Lincoln headquarters of Virtual Incision, a private company created to develop the MIRA robot. “If they ever need us in the future, it would take us less than a second to get there.”
SpaceMIRA – The First Surgical Robot
MIRA — which stands for Miniaturized In Vivo Robotic Assistant — was developed under the leadership of UNL’s Shane Farritor, Lederer Professor of Engineering and a Virtual Incision Co-Founder. It is the world’s only small form factor robotic-assisted surgery device.
The Nebraska research team leveraged MIRA’s unique design to create spaceMIRA, an iteration that allows pre-programmed as well as long-distance remote surgery operation modes.
“SpaceMIRA’s success at a space station orbiting 250 miles above Earth indicates how useful it can be for health care facilities on the ground,” Farritor said.
Farritor and doctoral student Rachael Wagner obtained grant funding through NASA Nebraska Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) to send the robot to the International Space Station. The robot blasted off 30 January 2024 from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station aboard a SpaceX rocket carrying a Northrop Grumman cargo vehicle.
It is the first surgical robot aboard the space station and one of the first times remote surgery tasks have been tested in space.
Wagner, who is pursuing a doctorate in biomedical engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, served as “mission control,” communicating with NASA’s Payload Operations Center at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, during the 10 February 2024 simulated surgery.
Later, she briefly took the robot’s controls, as the surgeons applauded her as the first woman to operate spaceMIRA in space.
Read more here at page 48
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