Content tagged "microgravity".
7 items (7 articles, 0 stories)
A candle flame tapers upward because hot air gets light and rises. In orbit, with no up or down, that air never rises, and the same flame settles into a flickerless blue sphere. Then there's the stranger part: on the ISS, researchers found fire that keeps burning invisibly after it looks like it has gone out, a phenomenon called a cool flame.
A candle flame points upward because gravity moves the air around it, not because fire itself wants to climb. On a space station, with convection gone, that same flame collapses into a round, quiet, blue ball.
On Earth, fluid pools in your legs. In microgravity, it has nowhere to go but up, which is why astronauts get puffy faces and skinny legs. The real trouble is what that fluid does to the eyes: on missions of four to six months, about 70% of crew show some sign of optic nerve swelling.
ESA floats volunteers in water covered by a waterproof sheet for days at a time, deliberately recreating how astronauts' bodies decline in orbit. Stripped of support, bones and muscles start wasting and fluid rushes to the head. The data from these tanks is becoming the blueprint for getting long-term bedridden patients back on their feet.
Gravity makes crystals settle unevenly, leaving a jumble of grain sizes. So Merck grew crystals of the cancer drug Keytruda aboard the International Space Station, where microgravity produced a uniform 39-micrometer grain. That quiet orbital experiment is already shaping up a shot that could replace a hospital IV drip.
In microgravity, water doesn't fall. Surface tension pulls it into floating spheres instead, which is why tears never roll down an astronaut's cheeks, they just pool around the eyes. A full-body wash takes about 150-200 mL, one cup, and a recovery system turns 98% of urine, sweat, and even breath moisture back into drinking water. The faucet in your bathroom is not something to take for granted.
In microgravity, fluid rushes to your head, your face puffs up, and your legs go skinny. Your heart changes shape and starts slacking off, while the bones that once held up your weight quietly dissolve at 1-1.5% a month. Your spine stretches, your eyesight can blur — the body simply switches off its Earth settings, and this is the story of what happens to astronauts along the way.