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Who would have thought that a defunct piece of space probing equipment would be Eco-recycled to assist ophthalmic surgeons in precision technical surgeries?Well, it is all true.Head of Maastricht University Medical Centre has announced that the eye clinic has been using a piece of hardware known as The Hummingbird which was originally designed as a device for an advanced orbiting observatory. Originally designed as a method of cancelling out the minutest of vibrations it was hoped to be part of a space program mission designed by the European Space Agency that would launch free flying scopes to vet the solar system for planets like Earth.The ambitious mission plans never passed the development planning stages unfortunately but the developing idea of such a microscope that would deliver a precise image was too good an opportunity to miss out on.Surgeons operating on retinal detachment often have to work within just one millimeter. The Hummingbird uses senisitve actuators to cancel out minute vibrations by pushing the scope in the opposite direction thereby diminishing movements as small as one hundred times smaller than the diameter of a human hair.
The developers of the Hummingbird, Dutch TNA research organisation are delighted that the space world is going some way to improving the vision of our planets people.