Oct. 16 marked the end of an experiment Portland State had been conducting on the International Space Station.
This experiment created a unique opportunity for students and staff: Students had the opportunity to have hands-on experience operating the complex equipment onboard the station.
Oct. 16 marked the end of an experiment Portland State had been conducting on the International Space Station.
This experiment created a unique opportunity for students and staff: Students had the opportunity to have hands-on experience operating the complex equipment onboard the station.
Dubbed the Capillary Channel Flow, the experiment dealt with how gas bubbles behave within fluid. Due to the zero-gravity environment of space, liquids do not act the way they would on earth.
Conducted in partnership with NASA, it was part of an international cooperative effort between Germany and the United States.
The CCF experiment involved careful measurement of the rates at which liquids flowed through a special, triangular-shaped channel. The rate at which the liquid was moved was measured, as well as the rate at which bubbles formed within the liquid.
On earth, when bubbles form in liquid, they float to the top because the gas they are made of is lighter than air. In space, the bubbles simply move around within the liquid. This can pose a variety of problems to astronauts when they attempt to store or transport quantities of liquids in space.
Due to the shape of the tube, or capillary, used in the experiment, the bubbles that form within the liquid eventually move to the surface.
The CCF experiment is one of four parts in a series of investigations PSU is conducting in space through the ISS.
The CCF experiment was controlled via a ground station located at PSU. Both undergraduate and graduate students were able to send commands to the ISS and remotely control the experiment.
“PSU’s future is really just developing and opening up when it comes to space research,” graduate student WilliamBlackmore said. Blackmore, in addition to monitoring the devices, led the set up of the control room at PSU.
The control room also allowed students and scientists to observe images recorded from the ISS as well as communicate with astronauts aboard the station. Throughout the duration of the experiment, over 100,000 commands were sent from the control station.
“I very much enjoyed participating in an international cooperative project,” said Peter Canfield, co-investigator for the project from the University of Bremen. “I feel very lucky to take part on this project.”
Students involved in the experiment were trained rigorously. For seven days straight, they were trained how to operate the equipment in the control station.
The final duration experiment, which began Sept. 18, ran non-stop until Oct. 16. In the process, PSU collected hours of film from the space station as well as hundreds of gigabytes of information.
“We do about 16 hours of operation here, and the other eight hours [of the day] are taken up by our German colleagues,” Canfield said, explaining the division of labor in monitoring the experiment.
“It’s a one-of-a-kind exposure to research in space,” Mark Weislogel, professor of thermal and fluid sciences at PSU and co-investigator for the experiment, said. “Not many people get this kind of opportunity.”
The devices used to conduct the experiment were designed in Germany, as part of the international Cooperation effort of the CCF. Students and staff at the University of Bremen also took part in the experiment, monitoring the device and sending commands.
Students at PSU worked in two eight-hour shifts to monitor the device. “It wore on, but it was tiring in the way your favorite sport is tiring,” Weislogel said.
The goal of the experiment is to simplify and improve current fluid system in spacecrafts. The experiment provides researchers with information on how they can passively manage fluid systems without using any additional power.
Additionally, students and staff were learning how liquids react in an environment without gravity. These findings can be applied to liquids on earth as well.
“Everything seems to be working out fine,” Canfield said. “If you take into account how complicated everything is, it’s a pretty big deal that everything’s working out very well.”
The full results from the experiment are expected to be released within the next six months.
