One of these Blue Hens, a mentee named Hojin Kim, became the first member of his family to graduate from college and then earned his chemical engineering doctorate in January, 2021. I worked with some great graduate and postdoc researchers throughout this project.” “But our biggest asset at Delaware is really the students we are able to attract. “We’ve got a great engineering faculty at UD, and we’ve got a great campus for science and engineering research,” Furst said. Hundreds of gigabytes of data are being recorded with cameras - recently replaced cameras, that is, since the last ones were zapped by cosmic rays while aboard the Space Station - and will be sent back to Earth for analysis on a hard drive via a space capsule in the near future. Because space-to-ground communication requires specific training, representatives from ZIN Technologies at Cleveland’s Glenn Research Center are acting as an intermediary between Furst and the Space Station during the investigation. Now, the astronauts are manipulating the samples under a microscope using magnetic fields to see what structures form - think of this as “gently guided” self-assembly.
NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough sets up the Microgravity Glovebox, where Eric Furst’s experiment is being conducted. But, thanks to a wanted flyer posted inside the Space Station - standard protocol when something goes missing in orbit, Furst said - the rogue piece was located.
Upon arrival, there was one hiccup: The astronauts lost one of the parts to the experiment while unloading it into their Microgravity Glovebox, an enclosed, designated space for conducting investigations such as this. Then, in capillary tubes about three inches long, these samples took off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center onboard SpaceX’s 22nd Commercial Resupply Mission, or CRS. While the possible applications of this research are largely for his colleagues in industry to determine, he said, the science could potentially improve the way we engineer display screens on our electronic devices, or it could improve the function of coatings used in actuators (aka, machine components responsible for movement).įor five years, in his lab on campus, Furst and his students synthesized new colloid particles and created original shapes for existing colloid particles - in other words, they reinvented the microscopic Lego. This is Furst’s fourth intergalactic endeavor and, for this iteration, he is looking specifically at the way heat and light move through the colloid samples in space. “The Space Station experiments allow us to take that part of the physics out of the equation and say: ‘What does the general phenomenon of self-assembly look like when we don’t have this gravity thing?’.” An experiment developed by Eric Furst of the University of Delaware takes off for the International Space Station on June 3, 2021, on the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.The particles are heavy, so they are very influenced by it,” Furst said. But Earth-bound investigations can only go so far, due to a pesky little reality: gravity. And your toothpaste is able to flow out of its tube - but not through the bristles of your toothbrush - because of colloid research. Paint, milk and ink are all colloid products. We’re interested in asking what we can build with these building blocks.”Ĭolloid experimentation on Earth has led to advancements in many of the commercial purchases you make every day. “They’re like little Legos - if Legos clicked together on their own.
“One of the fascinating things is, when you’re that small, particles have the ability to self-assemble,” Furst said.
These tiny pieces of matter are suspended in liquid and about a micrometer in size - think one one-hundredth the width of a human hair. The research, which could potentially lead to the development of never-before-seen materials for use in next-generation electronics, involves colloids.
#Anti gravity lab series#
Eric FurstFurst, a self-described “space nut,” has designed a series of experiments that will be conducted by a team of five astronauts on the International Space Station throughout the summer of 2021.
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