JACKS experiment

JACKS is a material science experiment that investigates how granular gases behave in microgravity. In astronomy, understanding the behavior of granular systems sheds light on the formation and dynamics of celestial bodies, such as asteroids, comets and planetary rings.

The experiment took a ride on the SubOrbital Express-4 sounding rocket that launched from the Esrange Space Center outside Kiruna, in the north of Sweden, at 06:00 CET on 26 November 2024. The rocket reached an altitude of 256 km before falling back to Earth and providing approximately six minutes of microgravity to the scientific experiments onboard.

Scientists recorded the behaviour of bouncing hexapods mimicking complex grain shapes in a confined container to learn from the way these objects evolve and interact, including energy and heat transfer mechanisms, with manifold implications on Earth and in space.

The project is run by the Brandenburg University of Applied Sciences (THB) and Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg (OvGU) in Germany.