Features
In this artist’s rendition, an astronaut looks out over a space colony on Mars.
ACS MEETING NEWS
Flow chemistry eyed as key to supplying materials, medicines during extraterrestrial journeys ELIZABETH K. WILSON, C&EN WEST COAST
D
espite the success of remote-controlled robotic spacecraft, humans are continuing their quest to explore space up close and in person. For example, the U.S. government is funding NASA’s Journey to Mars program, which aims to send humans to Mars in the 2030s. SpaceX founder Elon Musk also recently announced plans to develop spacecraft that could transport people to and from the Red Planet. But the care and feeding of live people on long space flights, or on planets such as Mars, will require enormous engineering and scientific ingenuity and advances. Many of these developments will hinge on chemistry, according to a group of scientists who are hoping to bring the central science to the forefront of human space flight efforts. Ferenc Darvas, founder and director of the Budapest-based flow chemistry developer ThalesNano; Roland Hirsch, program manager at the U.S. Department of Energy; and former American Chemical Society president Attila Pavlath organized a sym-
20
C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | MAY 1, 2017
posium titled “Space Chemistry: How It Helps Space Exploration” at last month’s ACS national meeting in San Francisco. Scientists at the symposium discussed the importance of chemistry, in particular flow chemistry, for making human space flight and colonization possible. Some of the needs of humans in space
are predictable, including technologies that can recirculate oxygen and deal with waste products. But it’s impossible to plan for every malfunction or mishap. A space traveler might develop gout or break a leg; mechanical parts on a spacecraft or in colony buildings might break or warp. Humans will need to synthesize any number of medications or materials in a low-gravity environment to take care of these problems. Traditional chemical synthesis methodologies clearly won’t work in space. Spacecraft can’t accommodate the room or weight of the supplies that would be needed to perform every anticipated chemical reaction. And the corrosive reagents or liquid-filled beakers used in traditional labs couldn’t be contained in a weightless environment. The field of flow chemistry, however, in which reactants are mixed in flowing streams inside sealed reactors, may be ideally suited for space settings, scientists said during the symposium, sponsored by the
The field of flow chemistry, in which reactants are mixed in flowing streams inside sealed reactors, may be ideally suited for space settings.
CREDIT: THALESNANO
Chemistry’s role in human space travel
CREDIT: THALESNANO
society’s Younger Chemists Committee. radiation in space could be harnessed for Right now, however, the exploration of The development of chemistry for use the development of new syntheses. flow chemistry’s potential for space travel in human space travel and colonization is Aaron Beeler, a medicinal chemistry faces a significant bottleneck: getting highso important, symposium organizers say, professor at Boston University, suggested ly competitive experiment time on the Inthat they are undertaking an effort ternational Space Station (ISS), the to form a new ACS Division of Space only space lab that provides astroChemistry. The process of creating nauts with a continuously weightless a new division within ACS can take environment. years and will require approval from One solution could be the Swiss-Issociety committees and from other raeli firm called SpacePharma, founddivisions, Pavlath said. ed in 2012 by satellite engineers. It’s To further support chemistry’s sending small satellites into space to role in human space travel, the symcarry out pharmaceutical chemistry posium’s organizers announced the experiments. These satellites may formation of SpaceFlow, an internaallow scientists to quickly, cheaply, tional consortium of chemists dedand remotely test their ideas, speakicated to exploring flow chemistry’s ers explained at the meeting in San applicability for use in space enviFrancisco. The first SpacePharma satronments. Speakers in San Francisco ellite was launched in February, and described their work in using flow H-Cube, a flow-chemistry-based desktop it has completed the first of its four chemistry to synthesize polymers, hydrogenator developed by ThalesNano, could be projects. The company plans future pharmaceuticals, and materials. used in the small, weightless confines of a spacecraft. launches and is courting scientists Darvas, whose company has dewho want to perform experiments in veloped H-cube, a desktop reactor that hythat combining flow chemistry with phospace but who don’t have the time or money drogenates organic compounds, envisions tochemistry, which simply uses light to inito get onto the ISS. assembling kits of simple organic reactions tiate reactions, may be a promising avenue Although the speakers at the ACS meetthat could be transported on spacecraft and for synthesis in space. Photochemical reing see much promise in flow chemistry, mixed and matched to synthesize numeractions can be accomplished without bulky the ideas are still in their infancy, they said. ous compounds. and difficult-to-manage reagents, so “may“Hopefully in the next decade, we’ll start Chemists also hope to learn if weightbe photochemistry will be a single platform getting data” that will show the use of flow lessness, low temperatures, and ionizing that allows all kinds of reactions,” he said. chemistry for space travel, Beeler said. ◾
MAY 1, 2017 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN
21
