An astronaut’s tiny stand-in: tissue chips in space health

Before you ever set foot on a spacecraft bound for deep space, tiny replicas of your organs might make the journey first. Suspended in microgravity aboard a research mission, this organ-on-a-chip, or tissue chip, engineered from your own cells, could reveal how your body will respond to cosmic radiation and the weightlessness of space. As humanity pushes beyond Earth’s orbit, our biomedical tools must evolve to meet the need. These miniature organ systems could transform how we prepare astronauts for the unknown, but only if NASA leads the investment in developing autonomous, standardized tissue-chip platforms capable of operating in deep space, with universities and private partners contributing to their design and scientific use.