ESA microgravity program for Soft Matter research

The International Space Station offers a unique environment to study Soft Matter systems, which are susceptible to the effect of gravity.
For instance, gravitational stresses are known to influence the structure of colloidal crystals and gels and even the glass transition.
Moreover, in microgravity the absence of drainage affects the stability of foams and emulsion stability and offer the possibility to study "wet" foams and low viscosity emulsions which cannot be stabilized on ground.
Finally, granular matter quickly sediment under gravity. Under microgravity conditions the process of cooling (the loss of energy due to collisions between particles) can be studied disentangled by sedimentation.
For this purpose, the European Space Agency is developing non-conventional scattering methods like Depolarized Dynamic Light Scattering (DDLS), Time Resolved Correlation (TRC), Diffusing Wave Spectroscopy (DWS) and Shadowgraph that will be implemented in different experiments using different instruments. This will enable the systematic study of Soft Matter systems which covers the entire range of particle sizes from colloids to granular materials.