Meet the Team: CAPYBARA
CAPYBARA is an abbreviation for Capillary Absorption and Permeation in Biomimetic Additive Research for Aerospace. The project is being developed by the AGH Lunar-Technologies student engineering research group, dedicated to designing space technologies, from the Faculty of Space Technologies at AGH University of Krakow, Poland. Selected in February 2026, the team, composed of 11 members, will conduct their experiment during the parabolic flight campaign in November 2026, with the support of the ESA's Education Office as part of the ESA Academy Experiments Programme.
The CAPYBARA project aims to investigate how capillary action behaves under microgravity conditions. This phenomenon surrounds us in everyday life and can be observed, for example, in the way water travels through the root systems of plants or in the way sponges and paper towels absorb moisture from various surfaces.
It might also play an important role in the space sector, where precise control of fluid behaviour is essential for a wide range of applications, including propellant management and fuel delivery, thermal control systems, life support systems, plant watering, and microfluidics in general.
The main hypothesis guiding their experiment is that the absence of gravity will enable a cleaner and more controlled investigation of capillary transport by removing hydrostatic constraints.
The team will study fluid spreading within porous structures known as Triply Periodic Minimal Surfaces (TPMS), which are fully self-designed and manufactured using MSLA resin 3D printing.
TPMS are mathematical surfaces that repeat periodically in three dimensions, with zero mean curvature at every point. They are characterised by a continuous pore network, a high surface-to-volume ratio, and fully tuneable porosity, making them ideal candidates for studying capillary transport. However, their applications in the space sector have not yet been widely examined, and their experiment will help address this research gap.
Two key parameters of capillary action under microgravity will be investigated. The first is the flow rate: how quickly the liquid moves. This will be determined by measuring the absorption rate and tracking the fluid front position from camera footage. The second is the liquid rise height: how much liquid the structure can take up. This will be assessed through measurements of filling time and dye penetration depth. The team will also be examining the effectiveness of various TPMS geometries to identify the most efficient ones.
Across all parabolic flights aboard the Airbus A310 AirZeroG, the team plans to test several hundred samples, ensuring the highest possible repeatability and statistical significance of the results. The findings will subsequently be shared and published in scientific papers.