ESA uzun soluklu mikro yerçekimi laboratuvarını emekliye ayırıyor

Astronauts on the International Space Station have begun the final decommissioning of ESA’s Fluid Science Laboratory, which operated inside the Columbus module for more than eighteen years. Launched in 2008 with a planned ten-year lifetime, the facility completed over 101,000 Earth orbits, supported eighteen experiments and accumulated more than 42,000 operating hours. Microgravity removed effects such as buoyancy and sedimentation, allowing scientists to examine the underlying physics of liquids, gases, foams, gels, emulsions and granular materials. Its programmes included studies of processes resembling those deep inside Earth, combustion and heat transfer, liquid foams, particle transport and aggregation. The final campaign, PASTA-3, investigated how oil-and-water-like mixtures form and change without gravity. International crews and ground teams installed samples, maintained the hardware and coordinated data delivery throughout the laboratory’s extended service. The equipment will eventually leave the station for destructive re-entry, while its former space in Columbus will host ESA’s new X-Ray Facility for materials research.