Luxembourg, 26 June 2025 — Exobiosphere, the first contract research organization built to conduct high-throughput drug screening in space, today announced the successful completion of its first parabolic flight campaign in the United States. This key milestone validates the core system performance of the company’s Orbital High-Throughput Screener (OHTS) platform ahead of its inaugural orbital mission.

 

“This campaign was about de-risking hardware and confirming that our systems behave exactly as expected in microgravity,” said Kyle Acierno, CEO of Exobiosphere. “We now have the data to proceed with confidence toward our first orbital mission.”

 

In a major technical step, Exobiosphere became the first organization in the world to demonstrate automated, nanoliter-scale dispensing into 384- and 1536-well plates during microgravity conditions. The work was made possible through a close collaboration with Formulatrix, whose MANTIS^® Liquid Dispenser is now proven to work in a microgravity environment. The integration of the MANTIS into Exobiosphere’s platform enables extremely precise and reproducible low-volume dispensing, a critical capability for running thousands of biological experiments in parallel onboard space missions.

 

“This is a world-first, the first high-throughput fluidic system validated in microgravity conditions,” added Dr. Olivia Borgue, Director of Engineering. “Dispensing at this scale and accuracy on Earth is hard —in microgravity is extremely challenging. The validation of these systems in weightlessness opens the door to real, scalable high-throughput drug discovery in space.”

 

The parabolic flight simulated 28-second periods of weightlessness in a series of 30 parabolas, maneuvers that closely replicate orbital microgravity. During these windows, Exobiosphere tested core systems including fluid dynamics, plate filling, automated sample handling, and onboard data logging. All systems performed successfully and in line with expectations for orbital operations.

 

“At Formulatrix, we’ve spent over two decades pushing the boundaries of liquid-handling automation on Earth,” said Jeremy Stevenson, President and CEO of Formulatrix. “Seeing our MANTIS operate flawlessly in weightlessness is a proud moment for our team and a testament to the robustness of our microfluidic technology. We’re thrilled to partner with Exobiosphere to unlock a new frontier for high-throughput screening and accelerate the discovery of life-changing therapeutics.”

 

This validation directly supports the Exobiosphere’s upcoming orbital missions, where they will run disease modeling and drug screening experiments using its fully autonomous, small-footprint laboratory.

 

Why this matters

This technical milestone sets the foundation for a new era of pharmaceutical R&D. Drug discovery pipelines today are slow, costly, and plagued by failure. By leveraging the accelerated biology of microgravity, Exobiosphere aims to reduce false positives, improve disease modeling, and dramatically accelerate the pace at which effective drugs are identified.

Watch the Flight

Exobiosphere has released a behind-the-scenes video documenting the mission and system validation.