Space Stations

A Look Inside Columbus

By Keith Cowing
Press Release
March 3, 2022
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A Look Inside Columbus
Columbus
ESA

Images of ESA’s Columbus module and FSL rack posted by Matthias Maurer to his social media on 1 March 2022 with the caption: Matthias Maurer: I remember posting about ESA – European Space Agency’s Fluid Science Lab (FSL) when I was training at the European Astronaut Centre.
Yesterday I put this training to good use installing a new experiment known as PASTA (Particle STAbilised Emulsions and Foams). Unlike the pasta you may know, this PASTA studies the physics of emulsions in microgravity. These are a mixture of two or more liquids that usually separate without the addition of surface-active agents and emulsifiers ? It will now be monitored and controlled from the ground by the Belgian User Support and Operations Centre (BUSOC) in Brussels – the operations centre responsible for Columbus’s external payloads and the FSL.

Credit: ESA/NASA
ID: iss066e102145
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SpaceRef co-founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.