Astronaut Don Pettit posted this image of a Jupiter-like water globe he created on the International Space Station. In microgravity, surface tension reigns as the water’s supreme force, pulling the Keep reading
Tag: microgravity
Ice Without Gravity
Astronaut Don Pettit is back in space, and that means lots of awesome microgravity experiments. Here, he grew thin wafers of ice in microgravity in a -95 degree Celsius freezer. Keep reading
Farewell, Saffire!
After eight years and six flight tests, NASA said a fiery farewell to the Spacecraft Fire Safety Experiment, or Saffire, mission. Each Saffire test took place on an uncrewed Cygnus Keep reading
Droplet Medusa
Vibration is one method for breaking a drop into smaller droplets, a process known as atomization. Here, researchers simulate this break-up process for a drop in microgravity. Waves crisscrossing the Keep reading
Free Contact Lines
How a simple drop of water sits on a surface is a strangely complicated question. The answer depends on the droplet’s size, its chemistry, the roughness of the surface, and Keep reading
Cleaning Up Combustion
In space, flames behave quite differently than we’re used to on Earth. Without gravity, flames are spherical; there are no hot gases rising to create a teardrop-shaped, flickering flame. In Keep reading
Testing Granular Gas Theory
When excited, a group of particles can behave much like a gas. These granular gases exhibit many similarities to molecular gases but contain one vital difference: without a constant input Keep reading
Boiling in Microgravity
In the playground of microgravity, every day processes can behave much differently. This photo comes from the RUBI experiment, the Reference mUltiscale Boiling Investigation, aboard the International Space Station. Freshly installed and Keep reading
Drinking Coffee in Space
You probably don’t give much thought to the forces involved in drinking here on Earth. That’s because gravity’s effects dominate over everything else. Our cups are designed to hold a Keep reading
Forming Asteroids
Amidst the swirling gas and dust surrounding young stars, asteroids and planets form. Just how these bodies come together – especially before they are massive enough to exert any significant Keep reading