The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicThank you for liking
You have already liked this page, you can only like it once!
This video shows an alloy of iron, chromium and nickel solidifying in weightlessness. It was taken with the high-speed camera that is part of ESA’s Electromagnetic levitator (EML) on the International Space Station.
The solidification moves from the bottom to the top of the video. The brighter part is the solidified sample, the darker part is still liquid.
The levitator is a furnace that can heat metals up to 2100°C and then cool them rapidly. Observing liquid metals cooling in weightlessness reveals the core processes of physics, without gravity interfering with results. The electromagnetic levitator takes things a step further and suspends the metals in mid-air as they melt and solidify.
Astronaut load the levitator with cartridges holding the metals. The microgravity furnace takes care of the rest, processing the metals and recording data automatically. The metals can be heated in a vacuum or in a gas. A high-speed camera records the forging and sensors record the temperature and other variables. The metals formed are retrieved and returned to Earth for analysis.
Read more about the Electromagnetic levitator: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Blue_dot/Electromagnetic_levitator