French Astronaut Thomas Pesquet to realize experiments designed at the ENS de Lyon

French Astronaut Thomas Pesquet to realize experiments designed at the ENS de Lyon

Thu, 17/11/2016

Honors and awards

Aboard International Space Station

The experimental set-up, a glass surface holder, designed to resist to take-off constrains, safety requirements for long-term exposure in the ISS and easy handling for the astronaut. Photo CNES
The European Space Agency Astronaut (ESA) Thomas Pesquet is the 10th French citizen to fly to the International Space Station this Thursday 17th November. During his mission named PROXIMA, he will install several scientific experiments and technological demonstrations that have been sponsored by the French Space Agency (CNES-MEDES). Among them, the MATISS project aims to reduce the bacterial contamination on the ISS surfaces. This is a key point for future spatial exploration starting on Mars in the next decades. The goal is to expose different types of innovative surfaces to the Colombus Module atmosphere for several months. Back to Earth, these surfaces will be analyzed in the laboratory and their specific activity against biofilm formation evaluated.
The experiment has been designed by a team of collaborators of the Laboratoire de Géologie de Lyon : Terre, Planètes et Environnement (Geology Laboratory of Lyon - Earth, Planets, Environment) and the Laboratoire de Physique (Physics lab) of the ENS de Lyon. The 5 types of smart surfaces were designed by the company Saint Gobain and the Leti, an institute of CEA Tech.
All the contributors work at ENS de Lyon: Laurence Lemelle, biomineralogist CNRS, LGL, principal investigator, Denis Le Tourneau, Mechanical workshop of the Ecole, Jean-François Palierne, Christophe Place, co-PI, and Cédric Vaillant, the three of them being CNRS researchers at the Laboratoire de Physique.
Picture to come next week when the team who designed the experiment will be at the CNES in Toulouse.
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