Images from the parabolic flights. Source: NoveSpace

Convection, a well-known phenomenon on Earth and used in several applications, disappears in weightless environments. In this sense, the solid-liquid interface of a system evolves in a larger timescale and thus, it complicates heat evacuation. In the presence of a free surface, however, a surface tension gradient exists due to the thermal difference and helps heat transfer in this region. Understand and exploit this effect, known as Marangoni effect, is crucial in some particular cases. TePim team pretends to analyze its potential application for phase change materials (PCM) which are widely used in space thermal control systems.

The absence of the large scale force of gravity permits the existence of new fluid configurations, like bubbles or drops, and complicates their management, which is a crucial tasks in life support systems or fuel tanks, among others. Some high consumption power systems have already been used to handle this problem with obvious disadvantages. In the last few decades, however, vibrations have been shown to be an alternative as a source of artificial gravity. CFVib team aims to understand the complex behavior of fluids in microgravity and the potential use of such vibrations to control fluids deliberately in different containers by means of a piezoelectric-based forcing mechanism.

“Microgravity and having our experiment in ZERO g were two of the most wonderful experiences of our life. We are looking forward to see the science results”, said Jose Javier Fernandez, team leader of CFVib. Despite further develop is needed, some intriguing results have been obtained from the 65th ESA Parabolic Flight campaign where the first CFVib and TePim experiment set-ups have flown.

We want to thank ESA, the ESA Education Office and ELGRA for the opportunity to participate in this amazing experience and their valuable scientific support. Thanks also to Novespace for their technical advice and contribution during all the project, and Trenz Electronic, their Analog Discovery device has been crucial in the success of the experiment. Thanks to Krytox Performance Lubricants, a business of The Chemours Company for supply of PFPE test fluid. Finally, all our thanks to the E-USOC, ETSIAE and UPM that have been supporting from the beginning.

La entrada Great experience of both research teams in the 65th ESA Parabolic Flight Campaign aparece primero en E-USOC.

Source: NASA

Today, astronaut Bob successfully achieved the SODI-IVIDIL cell array and flash disk exchange activity. After the comissioning, some pictures were taken to check that everything was nominal on the experiment and the optics.

E-USOC team is ready to support operations with this new cell array, whose beginning is scheduled on December 1st. So far, we’re very pleased about the evolution of these operations, emphasizing the fantastic cooperation with the scientific team and our NASA partners.

We’d like to take this opportunity to comment that UPM has published a new article about our latest experiments.

La entrada SODI IVIDIL Operations: 2nd Cell Array Installed aparece primero en E-USOC.

Our specific activity consist on a facility tour. On the first part, visitors could attend to a short presentation about E-USOC activity: Space Operations and Infrastructure; with the advantage that the could see, through the glass outside the control room, how the real time operations work. Subsequently, they visited the science laboratory accompanied with a researcher, who gives an explanation about latest microgravity experiment.

We hope everyone enjoyed the visit and we sincerely apologize those people who could not attend the activity because of the modification on the initial scheduling (due to our operation’s activity we had to change the visit planned from November 18th to November13th). Anyhow, if you are interested in visiting our centre don’t hesitate to contact us.

La entrada 9th Science Week aparece primero en E-USOC.