By Trend
A copy of the Organ-Avt bioprinter devised to grow living tissue
will be delivered to the International Space Station (ISS) during
the next launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the
press office of Invitro, the project’s investor, told TASS on Wednesday.
The plans to deliver the bioprinter’s first copy failed after
the aborted launch of the Soyuz-FG booster from the Baikonur
spaceport on October 11. The magnetic 3D-bioprinter is devised to
grow living tissues and eventually organs and it can also be used
to study the influence of outer space conditions on living
organisms during lengthy flights.
The experiment has been devised by 3D Bioprinting Solutions, a
bio-technical research laboratory, which is a Russian start-up and
a subsidiary of Invitro company.
The bioprinter’s second copy "will fly to orbit as soon as new
launches are announced," the company’s press office said.
The experiment will be carried out either by the next space crew
that will arrive at the ISS or by cosmonaut Sergei Prokopyev who is
currently working on the orbital outpost. For this purpose, he will
have to undergo remote training.
"We are working out a detailed action plan together with Energia
Space Rocket Corporation and Roscosmos [Russia’s State Space
Corporation]. Already now the crew staying on the ISS has confirmed
its readiness to participate in distance training to learn to
operate the bioprinter. In the near future, we will adapt the
experiment’s cyclogram for a flight aboard a Progress resupply ship
to be ready to deliver the bioprinter both aboard the next Soyuz
and the Progress space vehicle. The appropriate decision will later
be made in Roscosmos," said Yusef Khesuani, managing partner of 3D
Bioprinting Solutions that has devised the bioprinter.
As Invitro said, the experiment’s cyclogram will be adjusted, if
a Progress space vehicle is used because the faulty Soyuz MS-10
spacecraft was launched using a shortened delivery scheme
stipulating its docking with the ISS already six hours after the
blastoff. Soyuz spacecraft Commander Alexei Ovchinin was due to
have carried out the experiment after docking with the orbital
outpost.
The degree of damage done to the bioprinter’s first copy will be
determined in several days, after the completion of the work to
inspect the habitation module of the Soyuz MS-10 where it
stayed.
The Invitro press office rejected media reports that the
bioprinter had burnt out in the atmosphere.
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