New articles at Technovelgy.com and NewScientist.com describe a NASA experiment to be carried out today. A surgeon at the Canadian Centre for Minimal Access Surgery will perform a gall bladder removal procedure on a surgical training dummy using a telepresence link to a Zeus surgical system located inside the Aquarius Lab, 19 meters under the ocean near Key Largo, Florida. The experiment is called NEEMO 7 and is a proof-of-concept for using the system on the International Space Station. Using telerobotics for this type of procedure would be far less expensive than the 500 million dollar cost of bringing an ISS astronaut back to Earth for a traditional medical procedure. There are live webcams on Aquarius but I don't know if the experiment will be visible on any of them.


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