The tiny surgical robot is known as MIRA, short for ‘Miniaturised In vivo Robotic Assistant.”
Its developers at Virtual Incision are currently configuring MIRA to fit inside a space station experiment locker, as well as exhaustively testing it to make sure it’s robust enough to survive a space launch and that its systems will continue to perform as anticipated in space.
Once this has been completed, they will have to wait a year or so for the robot to get its turn aboard the station.
In the future, Nasa hopes to launch a manned trip to Mars which will take about seven months to complete the 480-million kilometre journey. Over that period, it is possible that astronauts could succumb to many debilitating health problems, especially considering the harsh space environment.
Virtual Incision hopes that its surgery robot could allow experienced doctors on Earth to carry out operations in an emergency in space. It has also been touted as a possible way to...