Terrestrial uses envisioned for the sensors include detecting environmental exposure to residential pesticides, monitoring food spoilage, or warning of toxic nerve gases in a terrorist attack. The devices are very sensitive -- triggered by exposure to just a few parts-per-billion of a substance. And multiple receptors could be built into a single sensor to scan for several dangers at once.
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research.
Spacesuits on Mars
Artist's conceptions commissioned by NASA showing future Martian explorers involve large, clunky spacesuits similar to those used by astronauts nowadays. But NASA's Johnson Space Flight Center has for more than two years been
Yet even a designer spacesuit needs to protect against harsh environments. Newman's suit would be filled with biosensors that would provide constant feedback of an astronaut's vital signs to mission planners back on Earth.
The suit would be mobile and lightweight, Newman explained, yet able to provide mechanical counter pressure to offset the low atmospheric pressure on Mars.
A suit filled with biosensors would need a way of communicating all the data it gathered. Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory are working on a small, wearable communication device that could link biosensors, as well as chemical and radiation detectors, to a base station on Mars or even to Earth.
This Wireless Augmented Reality Prototype, or
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