Activities

Europeans in orbit

For more than a quarter of a century, Europeans have experienced the wonders of space travel, leaving behind the gravitational bonds of planet Earth.

Since the pioneering flights of Vladimir Remek (Czechoslovakia), Miroslav Hermascewski (Poland) and Sigmund Jähn (Germany) in 1978, there have been a total of 45 missions by the end of 2004. These flights have been involving 31 astronauts from ESA member states. 26 of these flights were cooperative programmes with NASA, while 19 involved collaboration with the Soviet Union or Russia.

More information on the benefits of Human Spaceflight (ESA publication).

European Modular Cultivation System (EMCS)

The European Modular Cultivation System (EMCS) provides a fully controlled system dedicated primarily to experiments using plants, but also to insects, amphibians, cell and tissue cultures. The EMCS is the only plant cultivation system with an onboard 1g-reference, which is scheduled for early utilization on the International Space Station (ISS).

The EMCS is an experiment facility for biological investigations under microgravity, which allows the cultivation, stimulation, and crew-assisted operations of biological experiments under well controlled environments. Conditions such as temperature, atmospheric composition, water supply, illumination, observation and acceleration on centrifuges may be controlled.

The Norwegian User Support and Operations Centre (N-USOC) located in Trondheim, Norway has been appointed as the EMCS Facility Responsible Centre (FRC) by ESA. The N-USOC is responsible for the implementation of the ISS ground segment for EMCS operations preparation, real-time data dissemination and provisions for instantaneous experiment command processing. N-USOC will also offer scientific and technical support to Principal Investigators (PIs) who have been selected for EMCS experiments.

Brief history

EMCS is developed under ESA contracts by an industrial team led by the company ASTRIUM (Friedrichshafen, Germany).

In 1996 one of the subcontracts was signed by the Norwegian University of Technology and Science (NTNU) in Trondheim, where groups at the Department of Botany and the Department of Physics have performed space-relevant experiments since 1989. This contract, "Establishment of Test Benches and Verification of Scientific Compatibility on Subsystems of the Modular Cultivation System" has later been followed by to other contracts;

• In 1998, "Verification of Scientific and Biological Performance of the Modular Cultivation System Subsystem: Functional Model (FUMO)".
• In 2002, "Testing the Experiment Reference Model (ERM) and Engineering Model (EM) of the European Modular Cultivation System (EMCS)".

The main goal of these studies has been to verify the scientific and biological performance of the components building up the EMCS. This verification is important when trying to elucidate the effects of microgravity as opposed to those from other spaceflight factors.

Plant Cultivation Container (PCC)

The aim of the activities under the "Establishment of Test Benches and Verification of Scientific Compatibility on Subsystems of the Modular Cultivation System" contract were to support the development of the European Modular Cultivation System (EMCS) in the area of the interface to the biological sample and to achieve a facility highly compatible with the expected scientific operation. Within this context a small root support system (Plant Cultivation Container - PCC) was developed. The development was based on a system design including growth substrate, nutrient supply and control of growth substrate moisture/plant water supply.

The composition of the PCC system is compatible with the Experiment Container (EC) interfaces of the EMCS.