New Horizons for Alexander Gerst
ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst is returning to the International Space Station next year and today he revealed his mission name and logo: Horizons.Alexander is the first of ESA’s class of ...
08 MAG. 2014
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Ketchup, shampoo and paperclips were some of the 42 items that secondary school students could choose from to propose an experiment for space. Alexander used them on the International Space Station as part of the Aktion 42 competition.
The three finalist teams, composed of students 15–17 years old, saw their experiments in action in space.
The winning entries aim to examine the physical properties of soap bubbles in microgravity.
How long can a soap bubble survive on the Space Station? How big can it grow? Which colour patterns will form in the bubble? A last experiment deals with how soap bubbles are agitated by sound.
The series of experiments will demonstrate the differences between the microgravity conditions on the Station and those on Earth.
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Soap bubble
The experiments were tested on parabolic flights during 22-second periods of weightlessness. However, the Station is the best possible environment to show the long-term stability of objects like soap bubbles.
On ground, the liquid that makes up the soap bubble’s walls flows in the direction of Earth’s gravity, forming a droplet on its lower side. The result is an unstable soap bubble.
In weightlessness, the thickness of a soap bubble will stay constant over its whole surface area. This greatly increases its stability.
Alexander illustrated this by measuring the lifetime of soap bubbles, piercing them with a safety pin and subjecting them to music. He also used a coloured soap solution to show how convection causes liquids to flow in the bubble’s wall.
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Alexander Gerst to be Space Station commander
ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst has been assigned a new mission to the International Space Station, where he will fulfil the role of commander during the second part of his six-month mission in 2018.
German Head of State visits ESA Operations Centre
Today, President Joachim Gauck made the first-ever visit by a Head of State to ESA’s operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany. He was joined by 140 ambassadors and Tarek Al-Wazir, the Deputy Prime Minister of the Hesse region, for a guided visit through the centre’s mission control facilities.
A royal and presidential visit to ESA’s technical heart
As part of the Italian State visit to the Netherlands, Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and Italian President Giorgio Napolitano toured ESA’s space research and technical centre on Wednesday.
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Link correlati
Earth Guardian - Beschützer der Erde
Earth Guardian - Beschützer der Erde
Aktion 42
Aktion 42
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Link correlati
Horizons blog
Horizons blog
Connect with Alexander Gerst
Connect with Alexander Gerst
German Aerospace Center DLR
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