Strasbourg, France – October 23, 2014 – The International Space University announced today that their research experiment studying fluid behavior in reduced gravity conditions will fly to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2015 via NanoRacks, LLC under its Space Act Agreement with NASA’s U.S. National Lab.
The experiment, Spun Microgravity Liquid Experiment (SMiLE), will investigate the physics behind droplet formation in microgravity conditions.
SMiLE, led by Dr. Barnaby Osborne and Professor Chris Welch, is the culmination of nearly 10 years of research and testing. It will investigate liquid droplet dynamics, in particular the chaotic behavior of droplet formation in reduced gravity conditions. It will be the first statistically relevant investigation into this phenomenon and provide valuable information to the designers of next generation terrestrial drop-on-demand applications.