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“The liquid seems to be attracted to cold surfaces as a safe place to go, unlike what happens with heat transfer on Earth,” says Andrey Glushchuk from the Centre for Research and Engineering in Space Technologies (CREST) at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.
“Any thermal system designed with ground standards won’t work in microgravity. We need to create new designs with novel concepts in mind,” he adds.
The two pointy fingers on each side are part of the experiment as reference objects for calibration. They are made of thermally stable nickel-iron alloy. During every run, the condensed liquid is continuously drawn by a sponge-like material at the foot of the fin, pumped, and re-evaporated in a closed loop.
A high-precision interferometer records the temperature and vapour concentration changes around the fin, as well as tracking the liquid film thickness.