Hyderabad: Hyderabad-based Skyroot Aerospace has partnered with diagnostic services provider Redcliffe Labs to study how diagnostic materials behave in space, in what the companies describe as India’s first collaboration between the diagnostics and private space sectors.
According to a report by the Times of India, the partnership will combine Redcliffe’s expertise in diagnostic research with Skyroot’s launch and orbital capabilities to evaluate the stability of dry diagnostic reagents in low Earth orbit.
As part of the first mission, dubbed DRIFT-1, Redcliffe Labs will send samples of its dry reagents into orbit for 90 days, while an identical set will be retained on Earth for comparison. The findings are expected to help create a flight-heritage dataset that could inform the development of future diagnostic technologies for space missions as well as healthcare delivery in remote and challenging environments on Earth.
The companies said the research could have applications in astronaut health monitoring, space-based diagnostics, microgravity life sciences studies and point-of-care testing for future human spaceflight missions.
“A diagnostics leader taking its expertise to orbit is exactly the kind of use case we want to open up by opening space for all,” Skyroot co-founder and CEO Pawan Kumar Chandana said to the newspaper. He noted that the project could serve as an early step towards developing better healthcare solutions for astronauts in orbit.
Dheeraj Jain, chairman and co-founder of Redcliffe Labs, said the partnership reflects India’s ability to combine scientific disciplines to address complex global challenges. “The most transformative breakthroughs often happen at the intersection of disciplines that rarely come together,” he said, adding that bringing together diagnostics and space technology could open up new avenues for research and innovation.
