A small robot has been installed on the International Space Station to perform surgery in zero gravity, performed by surgeons on Earth.
The operation was performed Saturday by the robot called spaceMIRA (miniature in vivo robotic assistant) on simulated tissue in the orbiting laboratory, CNN reported Tuesday.
Everything was controlled remotely by surgeons in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Thus, part of the robot was inserted into the body with its arms to imitate human movements. The left arm is used for grasping and the right arm for cutting, as explained to US media Shane Faritor, co-founder and CTO of Virtual Incision, which created SpaceMIRA.
“surgeon [sur Terre] He thus has smaller hands and eyes, allowing him to perform many procedures in a minimally invasive manner.
The robot weighs just 0.9 kilograms and is small enough to be suitable for space travel. It was also sent into space on January 30 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Such surgical intervention makes it possible to take a step forward in some people's plans for long-term manned flights into space.
