Space Grains

We are very sad to learn about the passing of our close colleague, and friend, Yves Garrabos on November 16, 2025.

Yves was strongly involved in the Vip-Gran project since the beginning both for parabolic flight campaigns and ISS. He was also involved in other experiments on granular materials in Texus, mini-Texus, and Maxus sounding rockets. We miss you deeply.

Yves onboard Airbus ZeroG, Mérignac, France. November 2, 2015.

CLEO (Cohesive Granular Matter in Low Earth Orbit) ESA SciSpacE European contract was officially signed on 11.11.2025. It ranges from 2026 to 2028 to study slightly cohesive granular environments such as those found on the surface of astrophysical bodies using a new unmanned low-orbit space vehicle (such as Space Riders capsule).

Latest update meeting on the Vipgran project:

• Optical Homogeneity of Front Illuminated Images
• ISS situation

• ESA management is organizing dedicated meetings to discuss the future of ISS payloads

A meeting was held to give recent news:

• Test of the ESA VipGran ISS instrument with EDR2 at CADMOS: March 2025,
• Audible noise test: March 2025,
• EQM (Engineering Qualification Model) of the instrument: Q2 2025,
• Acceptance review (FAR): Q4 2026,
• Launch : Q1 2027.

A meeting related to the ESA/CSMA Granulogy project will be held at Université Paris Cité, MSC Laboratory, in Paris, France, on November 25 – 27, 2024.

Presentations by will be given related to the latest developments in granular media in a low-gravity environment, including a discussion to finalize the design of a new instrument for the CSS devoted to their study in the framework of the project.

ESA/CMSA China will organize a conference on the European and Chinese Collaboration about Physical Sciences on low-gravity environment, May 16, 2024.

Invited Speakers

1. Droplet Evaporation Phase-Change And Heat Transfer In Space. Europe: Carlo Orio (Liège, Belgium); China: Qiusheng Liu (IoM, Chinease Academy of Sciences, Beijing)
2. Study On Condensation And Enhancement Methods Under Microgravity. Europe: Marc Miscevic (Toulouse, France); China: Zhong Hongen (CAS, Haidan)
3. Granular Media In Low-Gravity Environment. Europe: Eric Falcon (CNRS, Univ. Paris Cité, France) ; China: Meiying Hou (IoP, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing).
4. Non-Equilibrium Phenomena In Soft Matter And Complex Fluids. Europe: Luca Cipelletti (Univ. Monpellier, France); China: TBA
5. Thermophysical Properties Of Space Alloy Melts And Study On Formation Of Amorphous Materials. Europe: Hans Fecht (Ulm Univ., Germany); China : J. Jiang (Zhejiang Univ., Hangzhou)
6. Study Of Pool And Flow Boiling On Enhanced Heat Transfer Surfaces. Europe: Paolo Di Marco (Pisa Univ., Italy) ; China: J. Wei (Jiaotong Univ.)
7. Gravity Impact On Microstructure Evolution In Technical Alloys During Solidification Processes. Europe: Sonia Steinbach (DLR, Germany); China: B. Sun (Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ.)

1. Ground Model (GM) of VipGran instrument delivery to OHB March 2024
2. Science Validation Tests (SVT) with Ground Model (GM) Fall 2024
3. GM delivery to CADMOS May 2025
4. Engineering Validation Tests (EVT) at CADMOS June2025
5. Flight Model development
6. Flight Acceptance Review (FAR) 4th Quarter 2025
7. Launch (SpaceX) of Vip-Gran instrument on ISS – 1st Quarter 2026
8. First series on-orbit operations (cells #0) Janv. 2026 – Fall 2026
9. Second series on-orbit operations (cells #1-17) 2026 – 2028
10. Third series on-orbit operations (cells #18-25) 2028 – 2030

A meeting was held to give recent news. In particular, the EQM (Engineering Qualification Model) of the VipGran instrument will be test in May 2024. The acceptance review will be done in June 2024, and the target launch is schedulded in December 2024 by SpaceX

A new meeting will be held on March 7th, 2023.