GRAVITY CS CONDITION ZERO FULL
This new journal would also be available to receive manuscripts concerning the development and test of instruments concerning the mitigation or full “recovery” of chronic microgravity and gravity transitions. Some might question if the current lack of proper microgravity therapies is compliant with ethical labor and legal standards ( Van Loon et al., 2020). In cosmonauts, astronauts, and taikonauts, we see disorders like osteo- and sarcopenia, cardiovascular deconditioning, impaired cognitive performance, Spaceflight Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome (SANS), reduced immune sensitivity, renal stones, loss of quality and duration of sleep, lower back pain, post-flight balance and coordination issues, and orthostatic intolerance or spinal compression with intervertebral disk damage-just to name a few ( Stepanek et al., 2019). Numerous so-called “countermeasures” (or should one say “therapies”) have been developed in order to prevent human physiology to go into a pathological state. However, the latter does pose serious problems with respect to human health. For example, all fluidic and two-phase systems need to remain functional without the sedimenting force of gravity in all kinds of fluid-filled systems in space stations but also in fuel tanks for other satellites.Īdditionally, humans need to be able to work also, in the future, within a free-falling system.
In operational sciences, which is often also referred to as applied sciences, one needs to develop and use systems for both physical and life sciences fields that facilitate existence within such an environment. There is therefore going to be a wealth of flight platforms that can be of use for microgravity science and technology experiments.īesides basics sciences where we make use of the microgravity environment, we also have the operational sciences where we have to cope with the microgravity environment. Finally, the SpaceX Dragon module and the DragonLab are and will be used extensively for gravity and space-related sciences ( Dreyer, 2009 Seedhouse, 2016). Items of study include colloids, emulsions, foams, liquid crystals, dusty plasmas, flames/combustion or granular material, and also fundamental particle physics, e.g., Bose-Einstein condensates, or more bulk processes, such as alloy solidification (see also Monti, 2002).Ĭurrent and past platforms for long-duration microgravity are the Russian Photon and Bion satellites ( Nikolaev and Ilyin, 1981 Ilyin, 2000), the Space Shuttle ( Crippen and Young, 2011) and Soyuz missions ( Van Loon et al., 2007), and the Salyut, Skylab ( NASA, 1973 Michel et al., 1976), Mir, and ISS ( Evans et al., 2009 Ruttley et al., 2017) space stations or the Chinese Shenzhou spacecraft (e.g., Preu and Braun, 2014 Hu and Kang, 2019), the future Chinese Space Station (e.g., Wang et al., 2019), or its predecessor facilities, such as the TongGong Spacelab ( Gu et al., 2016 Li et al., 2018 Wang et al., 2018).Ī large part of the science does not, however, require a long duration of near weightlessness and can make use of platforms such as parabolic aircrafts ( Pletser and Kumei, 2015), drop towers ( Von Kampen et al., 2006), or sounding rockets ( European Space Acency, 2014), and this includes the more recent commercial suborbital platforms such as the Blue Origin New Shepard ( Blue Origin, 2017), the Virgin Galactic White Knight ( Virgin Galactic, 2016), the Dream Chaser from Sierra Nevada Company ( Taylor et al., 2014), or the upcoming Space Rider from the European Space Agency ( Fedele et al., 2018).
In such an environment, one can also observe phenomena that are otherwise obscured or blurred when studied in a gravitational field, such as thermo-capillary Bénard-Marangoni convection or surface-tension-dominated Gibbs-Marangoni convections, capillary flows, critical point phenomena, and many more related issues in physical sciences and engineering. This results in less mechanical stress within a system, less or nearly no convection, reduced pressure differences within a system, etc.
GRAVITY CS CONDITION ZERO FREE
The main reason behind performing basic sciences under such microgravity, free fall, or conditions of near weightlessness is indeed that the weight is removed from the mass. “Microgravity” is not a science, as some presume, but a particular environment where science can be performed.