Researchers from São Paulo developed a wrist actigraph that monitored the Artemis II crew, highlighting Rodrigo Okamoto, co-founder of Condor Instruments and one of the technology’s developers.
Everything about Artemis 2
In the early morning of April 1st,as the Orion spacecraft left Floridatoward the Moon, an electronic notification landed in engineer Rodrigo Trevisan Okamoto’s inbox in São Paulo. The message, sent by NASA, confirmed what he and his team at the startup Condor Instruments had been waiting for for nearly three years: the actigraph they developed was on board the most important crewed mission since Apollo.
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“It was a complete surprise. Only after the mission ended did we find out that the astronauts had already been using the equipment in secret tests over the two previous years,” says Okamoto, co-founder of the company that was born with support from the PIPE-FAPESP program, to Fapesp Agency.
“Clock” has much more complete functions
The device looks like a common sports watch, but its function is much more sophisticated. It carries accelerometers and sensors capable of measuring light at different wavelengths and also skin temperature. The combination of this information allows for the reconstruction of the user’s sleep-wake cycle with millimeter precision.
In space, this capability is vital. Every 90 minutes, the International Space Station witnesses a sunrise and a sunset. Inside the Orion capsule, the confusion between day and night is total, and the astronauts’ biological clocks lose their reference points. The result is sleep deprivation, cognitive deficits, and operational risks.
“Chronobiology was born funded by NASA, precisely out of the need to understand how astronauts sleep up there,” recalls Mario Pedrazzoli Neto, a professor at USP who coordinated the studies that gave rise to the technology.
Why is the Brazilian different
Actigraphs exist on the international market, but the Brazilian one has three differentiators that caught the attention of the American agency. First, it simultaneously monitors movement, light, and skin temperature—the three central variables for understanding sleep. Second, it measures so-called melanopic light, the blue-cyan spectrum emitted by cell phone screens that inhibits melatonin production. Third, it has an event button that astronauts activate during historical moments—like on the distance record of 406,777 km from Earth, achieved on April 6.
“Phones emit light precisely at this wavelength. That is why using your cell phone at night messes with your brain,” warns Pedrazzoli.
The journey began in the 2000s when Pedrazzoli needed reliable equipment to study the impact of daylight saving time on the population. At the time, there were no domestic products. He then partnered with Okamoto and Luis Filipe Rossi, engineers from Poli-USP, and the three decided to create their own solution. PIPE-FAPESP provided the initial momentum.
“Without this support at the beginning, when the risk is higher and private capital doesn’t appear, we wouldn’t have moved beyond the prototype,” states Rodrigo Trevisanokamoto.
Today, Condor Instruments exports between 200 and 300 actigraphs per month to over 40 countries. The device is used in myopia research in Asia, the recovery of premature babies in ICUs, and even in studies on astronauts’ brains.
For NASA, the objective of the Archer project—of which the Brazilian actigraph is a part—is clear: to understand how to keep humans healthy and alert on months- or years-long deep space journeys. The data collected on Artemis 2 will be compared with motor coordination tests and questionnaires answered before and after the flight. The goal is for the learnings to serve future missions that will take humans to Mars.
“What we learn will help us understand how astronauts can survive and thrive farther and farther from Earth,” NASA summarizes on its website.
The next challenge
Now, Condor Instruments is racing to maintain its role as a supplier for the agency in the next stages of the Artemis program, which foresees a crewed landing at the Moon’s south pole in 2028. “We will do everything we can to continue,” says Okamoto. For Rodolfo Azevedo, coordinator of FAPESP’s innovation area, the case is an example of how bench science can transform into technological sovereignty.
“Between the first prototypes and the announcement that a Brazilian technology is monitoring astronauts in deep space, there was a long journey of refinement,” states Azevedo. “Disruptive innovation requires strategic patience.”
Source:Digital Look
Original article: “Tecnologia nacional na Lua…”
Author: Lucas Soares
