Microscopy with microfluidics in microgravity using FlightScope

2025/05/06 by Thomas Wareing, Alexander Stokes, Katrina E Crompton +7 · 1 voice
Engineering · Medicine · Physics and Astronomy · #Microfluidic and Bio-sensing Technologies #Planetary Science and Exploration #Spaceflight effects on biology

paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41526-025-00470-3

openalex publication_date 2025/05/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25

Abstract

With planned missions to the moon and Mars, it has never been more important to study the impact of microgravity on biological organisms. Parabolic flights are one of the most accessible microgravity research platforms but present challenges: short periods of microgravity and aircraft vibration. Live-imaging is necessary to readout any real-time phenotypes so we developed FlightScope, a new microscopy and microfluidics platform to study dynamic cellular processes in microgravity.

Discussions

• Delighted that our paper is finally out at npj Microgravity! We built a microscope to work in 0g, on board a @esa.int parabolic flight - FlightScope - and imaged signal transduction in yeast. Supporte [bsky, 5 points, 1 comments]

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