The DropCoal experiment was successfully launched on November 5th at 04:26 AM EET and arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) later the same day.
Upon arrival, DropCoal was temporarily stored until astronaut Donald Pettit could install it in the Columbus module, inside the ICE Cubes Facility (ICF). On November 14th the experimental setup, designated Cube #17, was securely installed without any issues onboard the ISS.
Today, November 15th marked a significant milestone as the experiment was powered on for the first time in Earth orbit and the team of engineers begun operation from the Mission Control Room at the Romanian InSpace Engineering (RISE) Headquarters. Everything went smoothly and nominal confirmation of several functional blocks quickly took place: telemetry reporting, image downloading, operation of servomotors, pumping of droplets in the fluidic circuit, etc. This marks the beginning of the commissioning phase, when the team will run a series of hardware validation experiments to ensure all systems are functioning correctly. Once this phase is completed, the operators will proceed with conducting the planned experiments, following the scenarios outlined by the science team. These results will be analyzed in detail, and the aggregated data sets shall provide the scientists with the basis to expand existing models of fluidic interactions and applications.
Follow us for updates as we progress on operating our first hardware in space and the 1st Romanian experimental laboratory installed on the ISS. DropCoal is a remote experimental laboratory, developed by RISE under a programme of, and founded by the European Space Agency. A similar experiment is developed by RISE to perform the experiment on a reentry flight with the Nyx Mission Possible capsule.
RISE is an R&D focused company developing hardware for space and offering support for both implementing solutions based on space assets and deploying new technologies to orbit. RISE was founded around a core team of engineers and researchers. Since founding it has continually focused on gathering expertise from multiple domains to address challenges across a wide array of markets. The company’s expertise covers now the whole concept-to-completion spectrum: from requirements definition to verification campaigns, allowing the team to seamlessly guide projects through every phase. The internal capabilities span mechanical, electrical, and full stack software development.