Space Grains

This progress meeting took place in Modena, Italy. It gathered scientists of the Topical Team and industrials (DTM, CEDRA, UHB) to clarify the Experimental Scientific Requirements (ESR) in order to built the prototype model and the flight model of Vip-Gran for ISS.

An article from the Topical Team has been published in August 2018:                            
Threshold of gas-like to clustering transition in driven granular media in low-gravity environment, EPL (Europhysics Letters) 123, 14003 (2018)

An article from the whole Topical Team has been published in July 2018:                             An instrument for studying granular media in low-gravity environment                         Review of Scientific Instruments 89, 075103 (2018)

Following the joint proposal GRANULOGY between Europe (ESA) and China (CMSA), a meeting took place at Liège (26 June 2018) with Chinese and European members of Space Grains.

A clear common interest is to optimize the use of ISS and China Space Station (CSS) resources by sharing our complementary instruments (VIP-Gran from ESA side and a shear instrument from CMSA) and flight opportunities for the mutual scientific benefit of all. Both instruments could thus be used as a versatile platform to target experiments planned in the continuity of previous ESA and CMSA developments.

The Space Grains collaboration used the Vip-Gran instrument during the 69th ESA Parabolic Flight Campaign, 16 – 26 April, 2018 at Novespace, Bordeaux (France).

Dynamics of Brownian-like particles moving in a thermalized granular gas has been investigated.

The workshop will be held in MSC laboratory, Université Paris Diderot, Paris, France, on 12-13 March 2018  to prepare the 6th Parabolic Flight Campaign (ESA PFC69) of the Vip-Gran instrument. ESA PFC69 campaign is scheduled from 16 to 27 April 2018.