Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science Artemis II’s AVATAR and a sungrazing comet
Apr 1, 2026
Lisa Carnell, NASA division director leading AVATAR, discusses personalized organ-chip biology flying around the Moon. Alain Maury, asteroid hunter from Chile, recounts discovering sungrazing comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS) headed for a dramatic close solar pass. They explore organ-chip tech for astronaut health, comet discovery methods, and what a surviving sungrazer could mean for skywatchers.
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Bone Marrow Models Reveal Early Immune Changes
- Bone marrow models target immune and radiosensitive biology to reveal early changes that may underlie astronaut immune dysfunction.
- Bone marrow chosen because it's highly radiosensitive and linked directly to immune system alterations during spaceflight.
Crew Blood Draw Made Personalized Chips Painlessly
- NASA collected astronauts' peripheral blood via apheresis to harvest PBMCs, avoiding painful bone marrow extraction.
- The one-hour painless procedure returns most blood components and yields stem cells used to build each astronaut's chips.
Engineering Kept Organ Chips Alive In Orion
- Keeping chips alive during Orion transit required an autonomous perfusion system with pumps, media bags, thermal control and battery power developed by Space Tango.
- Each chip is continuously perfused from its own rotating media bag to mimic blood flow for the mission's duration.