SpaceX's Upcoming Launch Will Help Astronauts Turn Metal Into Glass

A sample being heated in ESA's Electromagnetic Levitator. Photo Credit: ESA/DLR

With Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) set to launch its 22nd cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) today, the National Helmsmanship and Space Administration (NASA) briefed members of the press on the scientific experiments that volition fly to the orbiting space laboratory yesterday. SpaceX's Dragon-ii cargo sheathing volition launch 7,300 pounds of pressurized cargo to the ISS, including experiments that will study human kidney tissues, ingather growth, new solar arrays and, more importantly, 'super drinking glass' which is part of a NASA and JAXA (Japan Space Exploration Agency) collaboration that uses levitation to convert supercooled floating metals into drinking glass.

NASA's Super Glass Experiment Flying To ISS Onboard SpaceX Cargo Dragon Is Crucial For Nuclear Rockets

During the press teleconference earlier today, NASA's deputy main scientist for the International Space Station Program, Jennifer Buchli, provided details near the latest batch of experiments and supplies on their style to the ISS. Her comments describing the experiment during the briefing were as follows:

It'due south my pleasure to share the science flying aboard our SpaceX launch tomorrow. Tomorrow it was mentioned we're gonna be launching effectually 7,300 pounds of cargo, ii,000 of that is going to be scientific discipline in the pressurized capsule. That includes our samples of our experiments likewise as hardware. When this Dragon returns it'due south going to bring home 4,200 pounds of cargo with the bulk of that also being science. It will bring abode samples from a wide variety of inquiry, human being research physical sciences, tech demo, education also as biology. Today we have washed roughly iii,000 experiments on space station and served over four,000 researchers. Information technology produced over 2,000 publications and served greater than a hundred countries globally.

This item flying is going to bring upward 37 investigations. And that is going to be role of the complement of the hundreds that we do every yr on ISS. Before nosotros get into the specifics for this flight, we accept a brusk video we'd like to show to highlight some of the projects.

[AFTER VIDEO]

And so I'd similar to share a petty more information near some of the experiments you saw in the video also as other investigations flying on SpaceX 22. Joel talked a trivial flake about iROSA, so iROSA is actually technology that was developed coming out of a tech demo called ROSA in 2017. So this was one of our previous technology demonstrations that we flew on ISS. In the materials science category, we're going to exist flying super drinking glass. That'southward a NASA and JAXA collaboration. It's going to be in the ELFR electrostatic levitation furnace. It's looking at super-cooled metal alloys and their formation into drinking glass. So that will help u.s. develop a broad variety of technologies based on this very primal research. Information technology's besides a $300 billion industry globally. [Accent ADDED]

What's surprising is that the agency'due south brief for the SpaceX CRS-22 mission does not mention the Electrostatic Levitation Furnace (ELF). Whether NASA deems it unimportant to not include in the briefing or whether it's a classified payload is up for speculation. However, what is articulate is that this detail experiment will have far-reaching implications not just for space travel merely for a multitude of industries.

An ELF furnace, in principle, removes the demand for a container for storing molten metals. While the containers are necessary for experiments on Earth due to gravity, the microgravity environs in the ISS combined with the furnace allows scientists and astronauts to report molten metals without requiring containers to shop them. This removes any potential contaminants from changing the metals' properties. This particular tidbit is of import for loftier-value applications such as fuel rods for nuclear rods, and more importantly, for nuclear propulsion.

An extract from a 2019 NASA presentation describing the uses of ELF furnaces for nuclear propulsion. The furnace being described hither has been built by the European Space Bureau (ESA) and is one of two such furnaces on the ISS, with the other one being built past the JAXA. Image: Materials Evolution using Levitation Techniques on Ground and in Microgravity/NASA Marshall Space Flying Eye (MSFC) Materials and Processes Laboratory

The contaminant-gratis environment allows researchers to fairly record the materials' various properties such as density and melting bespeak. These become crucial in use cases such every bit nuclear reactors, as they allow designers to create such systems with ease, knowing that the data they have on hand is accurate.

Several research papers have likewise stressed the importance of microgravity levitation for studying the properties of materials such as Zirconium-Oxide (Zx-O), a by-product produced during an accident in a nuclear plant where liquid Zirconium interacts with water and absorbs Oxygen.

In one case the hot liquid metal has been studied, it is and so supercooled, which allows the astronauts onboard the ISS to create new materials from it, such equally glass.

The SpaceX CRS-22 mission is ready to take to the skies from NASA'due south Kennedy Space Eye in Florida at 13:29 EDT. It will go far on station this Sabbatum and return to Earth with a payload of 4,300 pounds in September.