GRAVITY STUDIES

2014-2016 Topical Team: SpaceBioMat. Space bioreactor for marine mineralization material research
SpaceBioMat is a project that was financed by the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2014 under the scheme Topical Team (TT). TTs are research networks selected by ESA with the purpose of organizing forums for the incubation of ideas for future spaceflight mission projects. ESA provides coaching and supervision for TT members by organizing ad-hoc meetings where ESA staff and researchers discuss details on experiments that will be conducted under different gravity conditions. The experiments, initially performed using Ground Based Facilities (GBF) at ESTEC (European Space Research and Technology Centre, Noordwijk, Netherlands) could potentially be repeated on the International Space Station (ISS) in the future. SpaceBioMat main proponents are Giuseppe Falini from the University of Bologna, Zvy Dubinsky from Bar-Ilan University, Jaap Kaandorp from the University of Amsterdam, and Stefano Goffredo, with the involvement of MSG researchers as team members. Through ESA supervision, SpaceBioMat aims to create an orbiting aquatic biomineralization research bioreactor, which allows to perform experiments under hyper or hypo gravity conditions, to understand how altered gravity can influence biomineralization processes in marine organisms.