PharmaSat tests meds in space, small-sat concept

The News: Launching this evening, a 10-pound NASA satellite will test how well antifungal drugs perform in a weightless environment.

NASA's PharmaSat is three CubeSats assembled end-to-end. Total mission cost: $3 million. Photo credit: Christopher Beasley, NASA/ARC.

The Space 2.0 Connection: PharmaSat and other nanosatellites are proving the small-sat concept. Small enough to piggyback on other launches, these small orbiters allow scientists and businesses to test ideas in space at a fraction of the cost.

PharmaSat is a joint venture of NASA Ames Research Center’s Small Spacecraft Division and the University of Texas Medical Branch Department of Microbiology and Immunology, with assists from Santa Clara University, SRI and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. It’s the secondary payload on an Air Force rocket launching from Wallops Island, Va., with a technology demonstration spacecraft, TacSat 3.

PharmaSat uses three Cubesats, inexpensive mini-spacecrafts the size of a loaf of bread. According to Discovery News:

“We suspect it will take more drug to cause the same amount of death to the yeast than what we’ll see on the ground,” said Bruce Yost, PharmaSat mission manager at NASA Ames.

“The generally idea is to be able to launch one of these satellites about every year,” Yost said. “Of course, we like to think that we could do it even more frequently. It brings out a lot of the value that these small spacecraft can provide. If you see something strange, you can re-fly (in a year) and not have to spend a whole bucket of money to do that.”

The fungus in question is that health food store staple, brewer’s yeast. Once PharmaSat is stable in low-earth orbit, researchers will begin a 96-hour experiment that will activate the yeast with nutrients, then apply three different doses of antifungal. Results will be tracked as long as six months to see whether the yeast becomes more or less yeasty in space and whether the pharmaceuticals gain or lose effectiveness.

The results will point scientists to a more serious set of questions: whether microbes get more or less virulent and what effect antibiotics have in space.