UA Engineers are First to Use Space Station Test Bed

The small ingot of aluminum-silicon alloy was the first material sample supporting U.S. research to be processed in NASA's Materials Science Research Rack on the orbiting space station. The rack is fixed to the outside of the station and suspended in open space.

Professors David Poirier and Robert Erdmann of the UA's department of materials science and engineering, and Surendra Tewari of Cleveland State University, are researching how molten metals solidify in zero gravity and will study the sample.

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