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Four teams of university students will develop and perform experiments in hypergravity during ESA's second ‘Spin Your Thesis!’ campaign.

The students will use the Large Diameter Centrifuge facility at ESA's European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.


Experts from ESA's Education Office, ESA's Technical Directorate and the European Low Gravity Research Association (ELGRA) finally selected four teams:

• BuBCoa - Three students from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain, will investigate the effects of gravity on how bubblesfloat, bounce and merge with surfaces;
• HyperMEA - Two students from the University of Florence in Italy will study how hypergravity stresses plants;
• HyperDrop - Two students, one from Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium and the second from Politecnico di Milano in Italy, will investigate the effect of hypergravity on the behaviour of a liquid drop on a flat solid surface;
• PolVol - Two students from the Université de Montréal in Canada and the Université de Rouen in France will study the effect of hypergravity on cells in growing pollen tubes.

The second ‘Spin your Thesis!’ campaign will take place in June and September, with two teams using the centrifuge each week. The students have the possibility to be supported by an ELGRA mentor, benefitting from expertise in gravity research.

This news item originally appeared on the ESA website