Microgravity foam research on the International Space Station for optimising industrial foam applications

Understanding the phenomena that influences the stability of foams and emulsions is necessary to efficiently developing more advanced products and applications. Creating the right type of foam on demand is tricky and studies on Earth are complicated by the influence of gravity. Liquid flows downwards on Earth and foams are torn apart by gravity pulling on the bubbles. A European Space Agency (ESA) experiment onboard the International Space Station (ISS) enables astronauts to perform a study on foams in weightlessness because the bubbles are evenly spread rather than the larger bubbles floating to the top.