2010 Spin your Thesis! experiments
Four teams of university students were selected to develop and perform their hypergravity experiments during ESA's 'Spin your Thesis!' 2010 campaign.
Investigation of hypergravity on proliferation, metabolism and differentiation of muscle cells
The HyperMuscle team was composed of three students from the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, Italy. Their aim was to investigate the effects of hypergravity on muscle cell proliferation and differentiation.
Acclimation to hypergravity in plants
The LINV-UNIFI team comprised three students from University of Florence, Italy. The aim of their project was to study the effect of a period of acclimation to a higher gravity level on the physiological response of root apices in order to confirm and understand the role of hypergravity as a source of stress for plants.
The Physical and Dynamical Investigation of Large Scale Impact Cratering Events on Highly Porous Asteroidal Bodies
Team Impact was composed of four students from the University of Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom. Their experiment intended to reproduce, investigate and define the physical conditions of large scale, low velocity impact cratering events on highly porous asteroids and other small bodies.
Voltage Clamp Studies on Living Cells under Hypergravity
The ETH Space Biology team comprised three students, one from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and the other two from the Universities of Konstanz and Zurich respectively. They investigated the behaviour of cell models under hypergravity conditions, using electrophysiological methods to find out which transport mechanisms are affected by gravitational change. Studies of this type will be the basis for effective countermeasures against muscle atrophy under microgravity.
