What is it about?
The experiment explores the mixing and segregation of different kinds of grains in the micro-gravity environment of the ISS. The experiment consists of 4 cylindrical tubes, each with a kind of granular material: 1. glass shards, 2. spherical glass beads, 3. crush meteorite and 4. crushed meteorite simulant. The grains in each tube have different sizes. The random vibration of the ISS itself will move the grains in different direction so that we can observe if this produces either mixing or segregation. The experiment duration is 1 year, after that, the tubes returned to Earth so that their internal , final configuration, can be analysed.
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Why is it important?
Small asteroids in the Solar system are aggregates of particles of different sizes, from dust to boulders, bound together be gravitational, cohesive and adhesive forces. During their lifetimes they have been subjected to micro-gravity environment and sporadic impacts that would have caused segregation. This could have produced regions where either small and big particles were not mixed which means that they have different strengths. Different strengths means that they will deform or disrupt under different circumstances.
Perspectives
This is the first of hopefully many experiments about the behaviour of granular matter in extremely low gravitational environments. How much science we can get out of this simple experiment is still to be seen, but this kind of fundamental science is extremely important if we are to understand something more complex.
Dr Diego P Sánchez Lana
University of Colorado Boulder
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Strata-1 experiment on small body regolith segregation, Acta Astronautica, January 2018, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.actaastro.2017.10.025.
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