News Article

Space Mice, Chix in Space, CSI fingerprinting tech, and more from 25 years of Techshot
Date: Mar 28, 2014
Author: Melissa Chipman
Source: Insider Louisville ( click here to go to the source)

Featured firm in this article: TechShot Inc of Greenville, IN



by Melissa Chipman

Just 10 miles north of downtown Louisville, a Floyds Knobs-based company is doing sci-fi kinds of science for real. Rich Boling, vice president of Techshot, invited me to tour the facilities and talk tech, and before I knew it, two hours had passed.

Boling mentioned several times how much he enjoyed being a science "evangelist," and I kept trying to make sure he understood he was preaching to the choir.

Techshot is a new product development company, primarily serving the aerospace, consumer products, defense and medical industries. They partner with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA, the U.S. Military, universities and clients from the private sector. The company is celebrating 25 years in operation.

Techshot is a company and a partnership that had its spark when a ninth grader wanted to put eggs in space. Techshot co-founder John Vellinger, the ninth-grader, entered a national science fair and was noticed by aerospace engineers and university scientists.

The KFC "Chix in Space" payload patch for the fateful Challenger mission.
Since the beginning of the space program, patches have been created to commemorate flights and payloads. This is the KFC "Chix in Space" payload patch for the fateful Challenger mission.

Vellinger continued to work on his space-based incubator with mentors throughout high school, and in his second year at Purdue University, he was contacted by NASA's Shuttle Student Involvement Program and told Kentucky Fried Chicken had agreed to sponsor his efforts of building a flight-qualified incubator.

He reported to KFC's Louisville headquarters and began work on the payload with KFC engineer and eventual Techshot co-founder Mark Deuser. They called the payload "Chix in Space."

Vellinger and Deuser trained payload specialist Christa McAuliffe and her back up, Barbara Morgan, to maintain the experiment. Deuser was one of the last civilians inside Challenger prior the shuttle's launch on Jan. 28, 1986.

After the Challenger explosion racked the NASA space program, Vellinger went back to Purdue and Deuser went back to KFC.

Three years later, however, NASA once again invited them to fly their payload with the shuttle. The pair sent 32 fertilized eggs up on STS-29, the Discovery, as one of two Shuttle Student Involvement Program experiments.

All of the embryos that were two days-old died. All the embryos that were nine days-old survived. The chicks seemed to have no ill-effects from having been born in space; they grew, reproduced and died like the terrestrial control group.

Since then, Techshot has sent research on five more shuttles, three suborbital rocket flights and several parabolic flight aircraft. If all goes well this Sunday, March 30, Techshot will be sending more research materials to the International Space Station via Dragon, an un-crewed commercial space craft.

Dragon was created by Elon Musk's SpaceX and is one of the only un-crewed vessels that can be retrieved from space. The Cygnus Russian, European and Japanese un-crewed vessels take a one-way trip. Once the space craft reaches the ISS, the astronauts unload the cargo, stuff the vessel with trash, and release the ship to burn up somewhere in outer space.

But because SpaceX can deliver space research components back from the ISS, SpaceX has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to fly 12 un-crewed Dragon flights to the ISS.

When the next SpaceX flight launches on Sunday, Techshot will have a machine that measures the density of mouse bones on board.

A lot of aspects of aging are mimicked in spaceflight, including the decalcification of bones. In order to maintain strong bones you need to use your bones. In space there's no gravity, and therefore no impact on your skeletal system; when you're old, you're less mobile.

In space, the astronauts combat decalcification with lots of exercise and with pharmaceuticals. Many elderly can't amp up their exercise, hence the need to look more closely at pharmaceuticals.

Scientists have worked with bone density and mice on the space station for a long time, but they've never had the means to X-ray mice during space flight to find out when the decalcification occurs. You certainly can't use a scale in space to measure body mass — how do you weigh something that's weightless?

Here's how it works: The mouse is anesthetized and laid on a lightly sticky tray. ("Not like glue-trap sticky, more like Post-it note sticky," says Dr. Ken Barton.) It takes 3 minutes 17 seconds to run a scan. The scan is relayed to Techshot, and then passed along to the principal investigator.

The patch for the Techshot bone densometer payload was designed by former employee Bill Metz. It's described thusly on the company Facebook page:

The mouse in the space suit (Rodenaut?) represents the payload's primary use as a device for monitoring the physical parameters of mice in space -- including bone density and total mass. A stylized representation of the International Space Station is included because it will be the permanent home of the unit. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration -- NASA and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space - CASIS, are featured because both commissioned Techshot to develop the payload.

But while Techshot's work with space research may have some serious "wow" factor, there's a lot of work going on in the 22,000-square-foot facility that's buzzworthy as well.

Technology produced by Techshot has cracked the case in not one but three episodes of the TV show "CSI." Desorption electrospray ionization, or DESI, can detect substances left behind in a fingerprint — drugs, gunpowder, other trace materials — and can even distinguish between two fingerprints left on top of each other.

Technology out of the University of Minnesota is being used by a company that Techshot spun off from itself — IKOTECH — and was established by the Techshot founders in 2005. It is developing magnetic cell sorting systems.

A donor pancreas, for example, can be relieved of its Islets of Langerhans — cell clusters that produce insulin -- by magnetizing the clumps and using powerful magnets to separate those clumps from other cells. These can then be used as a long-lasting treatment for some kinds of diabetes.

IKOTECH is doing a similar thing with stem cells. The company is working with the military on a topical treatment for traumatic injury that uses a soldier's own adipose (fat) cells. Magnetize the stem cells in the adipose, draw them out and then use them topically to help heal wounds faster. These cells have been found to aid in the regrowth of cartilage, nerves, muscle, cardiac tissue and bone.

It sounds like science fiction. But it's not.

Techshot Lighting has been featured in the PBS show "Earth: The Operator's Manual." It's a company that also spun off from Techshot in 2010 that has created solid-state LED lighting for military shelters.

Military "tent cities" are powered by portable generators and lit by fluorescent lights. A gallon of fuel can cost as much as $400 to deliver to the camps, and fuel runs can put soldiers at great risk. The Techshot Light is more than 60 percent more energy efficient, it's brighter and more durable. Each light can be controlled individually or an entire row can be dimmed or taken to blackout conditions with a flick of a switch.

One of the biggest benefits is the durability of the lamps; they don't need to be taken down when the tent is packed up and they can provide light during the packing and unpacking processes.

Techshot also is working on technology for the military that would make it possible to charge a whole pallet of rechargeable batteries at the same time. They're working on a deep-water ocean collection system that allows ocean critters to be collected and retrieved while maintaining conditions that sustain life. Other clients include MobileMedTek, Mavizon and even Coke.

In the past year and a half, Techshot has hired four LVL1-ers, including current LVL1 president Brad Luyster. Luyster says the way Techshot worked their recruiting efforts at LVL1 has become the model for how he suggests companies recruit.

Half of all employees are University of Louisville grads. Techshot also hires many of their interns, which come from Kentucky's universities, as well as institutions like Dartmouth, MIT and Purdue.