Abstract
The presence of humans in space represents a constant threat for their health and safety. Environmental factors such as living in a closed confinement, as well as exposure to microgravity and radiation, are associated with significant changes in bone metabolism, muscular atrophy, and altered immune response, which has impacts on human performance and possibly results in severe illness. Thus, maintaining and monitoring of crew health status has the highest priority to ensure whole mission success. With manned deep space missions to moon or mars appearing at the horizon where short-term repatriation back to earth is impossible the availability of appropriate diagnostic platforms for crew health status is urgently needed. In response to this need, the present experiment evaluated the functionality and practicability of a metal oxide based sensor system (eNose) together with a newly developed breath gas collecting device under the condition of altering acceleration. Parabolic flights were performed with an Airbus A300 ZeroG at Bordeaux, France. Ambient air and exhaled breath of five healthy volunteers was analyzed during steady state flight and parabolic flight maneuvres. All volunteers completed the study, the breath gas collecting device valves worked appropriately, and breathing through the collecting device was easy and did not induce discomfort. During breath gas measurements, significant changes in metal oxide sensors, mainly sensitive to aromatic and sulphur containing compounds, were observed with alternating conditions of acceleration. Similarly, metal oxide sensors showed significant changes in all sensors during ambient air measurements. The eNose as well as the newly developed breath gas collecting device, showed appropriate functionality and practicability during alternating conditions of acceleration which is a prerequisite for the intended use of the eNose aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for breath gas analysis and crew health status monitoring. The observed changes in breath gas composition are most likely associated with changes in ambient air volatile organic and inorganic compound composition and require further evaluation.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the test subjects for their participation in this study. The authors wish to thank the German Aerospace Center (DLR) for providing the flight opportunity during the 25th Parabolic Flight Campaign. The authors are grateful to the support from to the German National Space Program supported by the German Space Agency (DLR) and the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (FKz: 50PS1402). We are furthermore grateful for the overall support of this project by the Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP, Moscow, Russia).
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Dolch, M.E., Hummel, T., Fetter, V. et al. Electronic Nose Functionality for Breath Gas Analysis during Parabolic Flight. Microgravity Sci. Technol. 29, 201–207 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12217-017-9536-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12217-017-9536-y