Team CLOT-LESS mission patch: a red blood vessel containing a fibrin clot, crossing a deep navy roundel marked University of British Columbia and CLOT-LESS, with a white maple leaf and stars.

CAN-RGX 2025–26 · Canadian Space Agency

A Quantitative Analysis of Thrombolysis Kinetics in Microgravity

Thrombolysis has never been tested in microgravity. Team CLOT-LESS is flying the first in-vitro study of clot dissolution in reduced gravity — because on a mission to Mars, nobody is coming to help.

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Astronauts are at measurable risk of dangerous blood clots. We know how to dissolve a clot on Earth. Nobody has ever tested whether that treatment still works when gravity is taken away — and on a deep-space mission, with communication delays measured in minutes, a crew has to handle that alone. CLOT-LESS is built to close that gap.

  • 12

    Parabolas

    Across two flight days

  • 20 s

    Microgravity window

    Per parabola

  • 8

    Microfluidic channels

    4 drug, 4 saline control

  • 13.3 kg

    Payload mass

    70.5% margin

Mission objectives

Four questions this flight has to answer

Each objective carries its own measurable success criteria, traced from the science question down to the instrument that answers it.

  • Quantify microgravity effects on thrombolysis

    Measure the differential pressure change across a clot-containing microchannel during tenecteplase perfusion, in microgravity and at 1 g, over matched twenty-second analysis windows.

  • Evaluate flow-dependent differences

    At identical, pump-controlled infusion rates in 0 g and 1 g, determine whether microgravity alters clot lysis time by changing how long the drug actually resides at the clot interface.

  • Validate system reliability

    Confirm that the integrated fluidic, sensing and logging system behaves consistently across repeated parabolas — because an unreliable instrument cannot answer the first two questions.

  • Deliver scholarly and educational impact

    Translate the findings into peer-reviewed output and into classrooms — because a result that stays inside the team does not advance the field or the next generation working in it.

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The crew

Medicine, Pharmacy, Engineering

A student-led team spanning two universities and three faculties.

Meet the whole team →