Roman Stocker, Ph.D., foundation investigator for the Marine Microbiology Initiative, likes to “spy on the lives of microbes.” His research uses microfluidics as a tool to mimic and manipulate a microbe’s environment to understand their role in the ocean’s health.
The second parabolic flight from Swiss soil recently took flight, carrying on board several experiments from Swiss universities aimed to research the effects of zero gravity on biological and physical processes and test technologies. Stocker and his team at the Environmental Microfluidics Group at ETH Zurich, Switzerland were among those on board, conducting an experiment devoted to the role of gravity in phytoplankton behavior. The goal of the experiment was to improve understanding of one of the most important oceanic microorganisms on earth.
The experiment included a sequence of 15 parabolae: each comprising two steady horizontal flight, two in hyper gravity phases and one in a microgravity phase. The hyper- and microgravity phases each lasted around 20 sec. The data has been collected and is currently being analyzed.
Read more about the experiments on board from Phys.org: Second research flight into zero gravity.
See a video of the team as they go weightless:
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