NASA Aims to Grow Human Tissue For Deep Space Explorations

Aside from technology, one of the most important factors crucial for deeper space explorations to succeed, is man's ability to survive out of Earth for relatively long time.

NASA is currently studying various health risks and improvements to keep the space crew healthy during future space missions. In partnership with Methuselah Foundation's New Organ Alliance, NASA is looking for ways to improve bioengineering through a competition called the Vascular Tissue Challenge.

The agency will offer a $500,000 prize divided to three teams that can create a "metabolically-functional" human vascularized organ tissue that can be artificially controlled. In order to win the prize, the teams have to produce a .39 inches (1 centimeter) in thickness tissue that can maintain more than 85 percent survival of the cells in a span of 30 days.

"The humans who will be our deep space pioneers are our most important resource on the Journey to Mars and beyond," said Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator for NASA, in a press release.

The result of the competition will not only be beneficial to space exploration but it is also expected to revolutionize health care on Earth as well. The competition will test if the human tissue can withstand the factors involved in deep space explorations.

The tissues that will be produced from the competition will serve as a model or organ substitute that will be used to study the effects of deep space factors such as radiation. This technique will help NASA minimize the damage to actual healthy cells.

NASA believes that once the key barrier is removed, progress and further understanding follows, "once the 'vascularization limit' is solved, via the NASA Vascular Tissue Challenge, there inevitably will be a historic advance in progress and commercialization of tissue engineering applications to everyone's benefit," said Jurczyk, in a statement published by Factor-Tech.

The challenge is announced as part of White House Organ Summit.