Dr. Cuttino will be speaking on his event medical experiences in a talk entitled:

“NASCAR to NASA: Event Medicine for Suborbital Spaceflight Operations”

The talk will highlight the challenges and opportunities when providing medical support in complex environments with significant technical challenges. The link to the abstract is provided here.

Dr. Cuttino is a member of the NSRC program committee, and will be chairing 2 panel sessions.

Monday, December 18th, 2017

4:00pm – 5:00pm

“Human Tended Research Flights”

Chair: Marsh Cuttino

Panelists: Sirisha Bandla; Dan Durda; Michelle Peters; Erika Wagner; Charlie Walker

Tuesday December 19th, 2017

4:00pm – 5:00pm

“Spacecraft Risk and Safety Concerns”

Chair: Marsh Cuttino, M.D.

Panelists: Jeff Ashby; Melchor Antuñano, M.D., M.S.; Jim Vanderplough, M.D.

The parabolic flight testing performed by Orbital Medicine in November 2016 was highlighted in the June 2017 newsletter of NASA Flight Opportunities.

You can read it on the link here.

Orbital Medicine was awarded a NASA Phase 1 Omnibus grant just prior to the federal shutdown. The status of this award is in limbo, but if phase 2 is awarded it will provide development funds for continuation of the microgravity research pioneered by Orbital Medicine.

Orbital Medicine successfully completed a second flight campaign under the auspices of the NASA Flight Opportunities Grant. This flight campaign was undertaken in conjunction with the Reduced Gravity Flight Education Program.

It was exciting to see the pioneering work done by students at some of the United States top universities.

Orbital Medicine wishes to thank both the Flight Opportunities Program, Zero-G Corporation and the Reduced Gravity Office for the assistance in completing the successful research campaign.

The experimental results are being used to create the next generation research designs.

Orbital Medicine has designed a patch for Dr. Kovacs’ October flights at his request. The patch is designed to showcase the Stanford colors and the cardiac electrophysiology that is going to be a portion of the research flight.

The flight patch designed by Orbital Medicine for the Stanford EE research flight.

Orbital Medicine had a successful field test of the prototype structure for a medical chest drainage device today. The flight test took place from Ellington Field, TX with the NASA Reduced Gravity Office. Flown on the Zero G 727-200 parabolic aircraft, the device was tested under lunar and zero gravity conditions.  The first tested configurations successfully separated the simulated blood from the air under both gravity conditions and would provide an effective treatment of a pneumothorax in an emergency.

Further flight testing on additional configurations will continue through the end of the week. Two flight are planned for Thursday, weather permitting.

The Orbital Medicine research project has passed the NASA flight readiness review and has been loaded on the Zero G corporation 727-200 in the flight configuration. Should the weather hold out with a visible horizon tomorrow the chest tube drainage system will have it’s maiden microgravity flight thanks to NASA Flight Opportunities and the NASA Reduced Gravity Office.

Dr. Cuttino will be joined by Dr. Shawn Borich, and Dr. Greg Kovacs on the flight tomorrow. Ground support will be by Richard Wiard.