News

When PSU Magazine last reported on Professor Mark Weislogel and his student's zero-gravity experiments, NASA was running the PSU tests on a plane that is in zero gravity for only 25 seconds.

Their experiments have graduated.

Astronaut Michael Fincke will run the first of three experiments provided by the mechanical engineering professor and student Cory Nardin aboard the International Space Station in June.

The experiments, known collectively as the Capillary Flow Experiment, are one of four proposals selected by NASA as the result of a nationwide "fast to flight" effort to create alternative small-scale, hand-held experiments in the wake of the space shuttle Columbia tragedy in February 2003. The temporary grounding of the shuttle fleet halted NASA's plan for sending large research experiments to the space station. Now, smaller Russian Progress rockets are supplying the space station, warranting the need for experiments that can be transported in limited cargo space.

Weislogel and Nardin's experiments analyze the flow of fluids in weightless or near-weightless environments—research that may help improve fluid-management systems for fuels, cooling systems, wastewater recycling, and other vital elements of spacecraft. The three experiments address key concerns relevant to cryogenic and liquid propellant storage tanks.

Fluid behaves abnormally in microgavity, says Weislogel, making it difficult to control. For example, a fluid contained in a tank isn't restrained by gravity, making it difficult to know where the liquid may be.

"It's very important to understand where the liquid fuel is in the fuel tank, where the urine is in the toilet, where the water is in the condenser—these are all critical fluid systems on a spacecraft, and you don't want to get it wrong," he says.

Weislogel spent 10 years at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, where his fluid experiments were performed on space shuttles and on Russia's Mir Space Station. He joined the faculty at Portland State in 2001. In early February, he spent time at NASA's Johnson Space Center to train the next crew on the second installment of the experiment to be sent to space later in 2004.