Insulin Delivery Pumps for Human Spaceflight: Steps Toward an Accessible Space Future
Name
horn-hoffman-2025-insulin-delivery-pumps-for-human-spaceflight-steps-toward-an-accessible-space-future.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.39 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
76a35e377473ed4ec8081e1f13680dd3
Author(s)
Horn, Kyle J
Hoffman, Jeffrey A
Date Issued
September 2025
Journal
Wilderness & Environmental Medicine
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Citation
Horn KJ, Hoffman JA. Insulin Delivery Pumps for Human Spaceflight: Steps Toward an Accessible Space Future. Wilderness & Environmental Medicine. 2025;36(1_suppl):81S-88S.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Commercially available insulin pumps for treatment of diabetes mellitus are currently not qualified to operate in the space environment. This work rigorously tested the fluid delivery performance of a Tandem t:slim X2 insulin pump in both micro- and hypergravity during a parabolic microgravity research flight. The parabolic research flight environment serves as an analogue to the types of transient gravitational loadings experienced during human-led missions, which provides a foundation to expand testing to suborbital and orbital flights in addition to other extreme environmental tests for wilderness dependency. The results of the flight data showed no significant difference between fluid delivery performance at 0, 1, and 2g acceleration regimes, nor at the transitions between gravity environments. Recommendations are made for further experimentation and qualification tests before use in future spaceflight missions.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1177/10806032241304439
