MELFI

Thomas recently shared this image on his social media channels saying:"Some days start very early on the International Space Station, often we have to do blood draws or take other samples before eating so we wake up around 06:00 to help our colleagues or take the samples ourselves. I prefer sticking myself because if I miss I can only blame myself, but a colleague helping with managing the tubes and other instruments is very helpful. Often the experiment protocol requires we store the samples immediately in our freezers. We have three on the Space Station and they conserve experiment samples at –80°C. They are called MELFI, after their very descriptive acronym: Minus Eighty-Degree Laboratory Freezer for ISS. They were made in France for ESA and just work really well for over a decade – which is incredible considering the constraints of making an extremely small freezer in space and only electricity to make it work. As the technology behind it is so maintenance-free it is used on Earth to minimise waste when transporting gas."

Follow Thomas and his Mission Alpha on his blog.