Space Beads
cygonaut
Dale Kornfeld of NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
was conducting experiments aboard the space shuttle
to determine the effect of microgravity on chemical
reaction rates of emulsion polymerization, as well as on
the morphology (shape) of polymer microspheres grown
in microgravity. The first experiments of the
Monodisperse Latex Reactor (MLR) were conducted in
1982 aboard space shuttle flight STS-3 and resulted in
microspheres as large as 5 m in mean diameter. A
subsequent experiment on a later shuttle flight, STS-6,
produced particles of 10 m mean diameter.
In 1984, the NBS group obtained samples of the 5 m and the
10 m materials and did a detailed intercomparison
between the space-made particles and earth-made particles
of similar composition.
In both cases, the space-made materials were found to be superior in
terms of individual particle sphericity, narrowness of
size distribution, and, importantly, in particle rigidity.