ISS, December 10. /TASS Special Correspondent Alexander Misurkin/. The Lazma experiment intended to study the redistribution of the peripheral blood flow from the limbs to the head and assess oxidative metabolism of skin tissues in microgravity conditions has kicked off aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
Three crewmembers of the Soyuz MS-20 spacecraft are participating in the experiment: Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and his business assistant Yozo Hirano.
Specialists are planning to confirm or refute a hypothesis about a two-phase drop in microcirculation in the cosmonauts’ limbs during the period of their acute adaptation to microgravity. As leading researcher of the Scientific and Technological Center for Biomedical Photonics at Turgenev Oryol State University Andrei Dunayev told TASS, the experiment will be conducted with the help of the Lazma-PF device based on non-invasive diagnostics methods that require no needles or other surgical instruments.
"These biophotonics methods have for long proven their worth in biomedicine and are based on probing the skin by optical radiation (completely safe and low-yield light similar to that of a laser pointer) and registering its release from the tissues to calculate and analyze various biomedical parameters," Dunayev explained.
The Laser Doppler Flowmetry method will register a signal from moving erythrocytes and help assess skin perfusion (the average amount of erythrocytes and their average speed). This will make it possible to study the peripheral blood flow. For its part, the method of fluorescence spectroscopy will focus on generating various wavelengths to trigger fluorescence of various skin biomarkers, including NADH that will indirectly characterize tissue oxidative metabolism (to assess the so-called tissue respiration).
Equipment delivery
A group of scientists worked on developing devices to operate under microgravity conditions. As Dunayev pointed out, the equipment was delivered to the ISS aboard the Soyuz MS-20 spacecraft. The equipment will be used to study the temples, wrists and middle fingers and also big toes.
"The carried devices will be fastened by a bandage while the instruments themselves operate using the wireless communications principle," the researcher said, adding that the data thus obtained would be processed on Earth.
The experiment aboard the orbital outpost will be conducted over a period of ten days. After the Soyuz MS-20 crewmembers return from the space mission, the studies will continue on Earth. "That is the crux of the idea: to hold studies before the flight, during the flight in microgravity conditions, and after the flight to see how reverse adaptation will proceed. I believe that this will take place over a period of a week after touchdown," the specialist said.
As the researcher stressed, the experiment has got off the ground thanks to the support of cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, the sponsor help of Yusaku Maezawa, the company Space Adventures, the Energia Space Rocket Corporation and the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. The experiment is based on the Russian innovation developed by the Moscow-based Lazma Research and Production Enterprise while the Scientific and Technological Center for Biomedical Photonics at Turgenev Oryol State University is acting as a co-producer of the experiment.