NASA Is Sending a Surgical Robot to the International Space Station

NASA is funding a tiny surgical robot, known as MIRA (minitaturized in-vivo robotic assistant), for a 2024 test mission aboard the International Space Station.

The space agency recently awarded $100,000 to startup Virtual Incision, based at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Nebraska Innovation Campus (NIC), where Shane Farritor has spent more than 15 years developing MIRA.

Now, he and engineering graduate student Rachael Wagner will spend another year writing software, configuring the bot, and "exhaustively" testing its use in space. MIRA is expected to get its turn aboard the ISS in 2024—nearly two decades since Virtual Incision's founding in 2006.

"NASA has been a long-term supporter of this research and, as a culmination of that effort, our robot will have a chance to fly on the International Space Station," Farritor, a UNL professor of engineering, said in a statement.

The technology boasts two key benefits: Its small size allows doctors to perform surgery in a minimally invasive manner, and they can do so remotely.

"As people go further and deeper into space, they might need to do surgery someday," Farritor said. "We're working toward that goal." One example given is the potential this technology holds to treat astronauts who make it to Mars. What if one of them suffers a ruptured appendix?

A previous experiment saw retired NASA astronaut Clayton Anderson, based at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, direct MIRA to perform "surgery-like tasks" in an operating room 900 miles away at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.

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During its trip aboard the space station, the robot will learn to work autonomously. From inside a microwave oven-sized locker, MIRA will practice cutting stretched rubber bands and pushing metal rings along a wire—gestures that imitate those used in surgery. "These simulations are very important because of all the data we will collect during the tests," Wagner said.

While Farritor doesn't expect MIRA to function on its own for another 50 to 100 years, the device is being programmed to work autonomously now to conserve space station communications bandwidth and minimize astronauts' time with the experiment.

"The astronaut flips a switch, the process starts, and the robot does its work by itself," Farritor explained. "Two hours later, the astronaut switches it off and it's done."

This robot can move around by using a 3D scanner and a map of its body position