ISS was first introduced coffee machine and a special space cup – Moskovsky Komsomolets

six space company SpaceX truck astronauts brought almost 2,000 kg of cargo

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Gastronomic premiere in orbit waiting from day to day the crew of the International Space Station. Docked on Friday, April 17, a cargo ship company SpaceX “Dragon” brought on board in addition to the provisions and scientific equipment, the first space espresso machine ISSpresso (ISS translated as ISS). It shall be accompanied special plastic cup-pot with capillary channels.

The astronauts have long hinted organizers flight that was a good idea to diversify the gray space everyday fragrant fresh coffee. Until recently, their containers, the food can only be found that a soluble variant of the beverage. When preparing the ISS’s first female astronaut from the Italian Space Agency Samantha Cristoforetti her compatriots still tried and developed a unique coffee machine for making fragrant drink in weightlessness.

Unlike regular coffee makers, space is equipped with a steel pipes for water supply. They are able to withstand a pressure of several hundred bar. This pressure is needed to guide the “naughty” water (it becomes so weightless) to the heating compartment, coffee machine. After heating the water is mixed with briquettes coffee.

According to the original plan, ISSpresso had to go to the ISS in the autumn of 2014, before the arrival aboard Kristoforetti. However, at the last moment it became clear that the car needs some work. And now a modernized version of “Coffee set”, complete with special cups-pot, arrived at the space station.

Cups, by the way, has already developed the Americans. In this important matter attended Professor Mark Vayslogel from the University of Portland. Small clear plastic design, shaped like shoes, are complex mechanical systems. Actually, the form of cups and located inside the capillary network and sends the liquid on track without letting it spill out. Only in the moment of touching his lips to the edge of the cup to commit sip liquid rushes forward on small tubes.

In addition, the space truck brought to the ISS equipment for experiments with liquid crystals. In particular, it is planned to reach full fusion crystal layers, known as “smectic island.” Studying the behavior of liquid crystals in space is expected to generate in the future liquid crystal microdisplays, including those that are embedded in helmets, suits for the spacewalk.

Since this mission SpaceX, as reported on the website NASA, astronauts to come while more intensive medical research. In particular astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko (participants an annual mission to the ISS) began to research in the field of medical, psychological, medical and biological problems.

One of these studies is to examine the redistribution of body fluids before, during during and after long-duration space flight and their association with intracranial pressure and visually impaired.