TRISH Research
Deep space exploration – beyond low Earth orbit, to the Moon, Mars, and beyond – presents unique mental, physical, and emotional challenges. To thrive in deep space, humans will need practical solutions to problems like food and medicine access and expiration, neurocognitive changes, radiation exposure and other stressors. TRISH leads a national effort in translating emerging terrestrial biomedical research and technology development into applied human risk-mitigation strategies, helping humans thrive wherever they explore, in space or on Earth.
TRISH funds both early-stage, high-risk research with the potential for high impact as well as more mature, translation-ready technologies that can be employed in spaceflight. This forward-looking work could create a paradigm shift in healthcare during space exploration enabling us to reach new frontiers in healthcare on Earth.
TRISH Scientific Initiatives Overview
Advancing Commercial Space Research
As commercial spaceflight takes off, the EXPAND Program seizes new opportunities to study human adaption and physiology. TRISH works with commercial spaceflight providers and their participants to increase engagement in human research and collect essential biomedical data before, during and after spaceflight. This information is securely maintained in the Institute’s centralized EXPAND database, the world’s first and only private space health research repository. It will offer researchers unparalleled access to biological samples and data from a diverse pool of spaceflight participants.
Medical System Architecture
To enable an effective health and performance system, healthcare providers and spaceflight crews need access to current and comprehensive health and performance data to make evidence-based decisions. However, there will be a variety of sources before, during and after a mission that contribute health and performance data creating a fragmented record and inconsistent access. TRISH’s goal is to enable a robust and democratized heath record that accompanies the astronaut making health information and data from a variety of sources useful and accessible, even when the crew is far from Earth.
SENTINEL: Tissues-Chips
TRISH is accelerating human tissue chips system technologies to provide an advanced biological platform to study long-duration deep space exposure. These advanced systems will be automated and have embedded analytic capability allowing researchers to characterize the biological effects of deep space exposure and test personalized countermeasures to protect humans exploring space without requiring samples be returned to Earth for analysis.
BEES: Biology Engineered for Exploration of Space
With the establishment of the Moon to Mars Program Office, NASA and Congress have prioritized planning for deep space exploration class missions. These future missions could last three to five years and will require a large amount of supplies to sustain life including food, medication, and other products that cannot be recycled or re-supplied during the mission. For the food and medical systems, the volume of consumables, as well as the possible expiration of nutrients and medications make our current means of providing the necessary resources ineffective. New and novel approaches to provide these vital resources will be necessary. To meet these extreme needs, TRISH is in search of disruptive solutions to advance the continuous or as-needed (just-in-time) provisioning of food, micronutrients, medicine, and other life-sustaining supplies required to maintain the health and performance readiness of astronauts. A variety of biological platforms, such as plants and microbes, are of interest alone or in combination with current technologies. We’re interested in a variety of biological platforms that result in radically new ways to produce the necessary products to nourish future crews and keep them physically and mentally healthy during and after exploration class missions.
Learn more about TRISH scientific initiatives in our Broad Institute Announcement (BIA):
Commercial Spaceflight
TRISH commercial space human health research addresses a wide range of challenges that humans face on long duration space missions: early detection and treatment of medical conditions, protection from radiation effects, mental health, team dynamics and more.
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TRISH Innovations
View a collection of project highlights from TRISH’s completed research portfolio, which address many of NASA’s health risks for deep space exploration.
