A variety of research facilities has been developed and numerous flight opportunities have been offered to the scientific community during more than 20 years of microgravity (µg) research in Europe. Experiments can be conducted in drop towers (up to 4.5 s), during parabolic flights in dedicated aircraft (up to 20 s per parabola), in capsules dropped from stratospheric balloons (e.g. MIKROBA, up to 60 s), in orbital laboratories (Shuttle/Spacelab, Mir) or aboard satellites (Bion, Foton) and free-flying platforms, such as EURECA, over weeks and months.
The gap between 60 s and days of µg duration is satisfied by the 5-15 min available on sounding rockets. Germany's TEXUS (Technologische Experimente unter Schwerelosigkeit, Technological Experiments under Weightlessness) sounding rocket programme was established in 1976 with the primary goal of gaining experience with newly-developed hardware during preparations for the early Spacelab missions (SL-1 and D-1 in 1983 and 1985, respectively). The first TEXUS was launched in December 1977 and, with one or two flights every year, it soon became clear that the programme was also particularly suited to µg science experiments gathering high quality data. Experiments in fluid and materials sciences were performed before biologists became aware of the programme's possibilities. Tests of protein crystallisation equipment were followed by experiments in free-flow electrophoresis and electro-cell-fusion. A great number of cellular and gravitational biology investigations were performed. ESA began to participate with life sciences experiments in TEXUS in 1988.
This volume provides an overview of the life sciences experiments flown within the European sounding rocket programmes between 1985 and 1994. The experiments are presented in detail in Section 2, in original scientific review papers by the scientists involved. The rocket modules and the experiment hardware are presented in Section 3.
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