Convective current experiments using Dakon-P equipment onboard “Progress” cargo spacecraft

Abstract

In order to conduct experiments to study convection under microgravity it is proposed to use the “Progress” cargo transportation spacecraft. This is due to the fact that the microgravity environment onboard the Russian Segment (RS) of the ISS is not favorable, since the ISS center of mass is in the US segment, while many onboard systems generating micro-accelerations are installed in the ISS RS. There is no crew and no life support systems onboard the cargo spacecraft and micro-accelerations in it are significantly lower than those in the ISS RS. Passive modes of the cargo spacecraft attitude control are particularly favorable for carrying out microgravity experiments in space. In the course of a series of experiments conducted onboard a cargo spacecraft to find the minimal level of residual micro-accelerations, the gravity orientation mode turned out to be the most suitable one. It is planned to conduct an experiment to study convective isothermal currents using the Dakon-P scientific gear specifically developed for this purpose onboard “Progress” spacecraft in free flight in the gravity orientation mode.

Keywords

• Convection
• micro-acceleration
• “Progress” cargo transportation spacecraft
• control methods