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Space & Spaceflight

This Glowing Orb Is a Chemistry Experiment Aboard the ISS

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It may look like someone’s captured a baby Sun, but this is actually a Russian chemistry experiment taking place on the International Space Station.

In fact, astronauts are testing how polymers—repeated molecules that form long chains and are the basis for many common materials—can be formed in space. In particular, the experiments aim to show if weightlessness can be used to create polymer walls that form shells. [ESA]

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