14 DAY TRIAL // Officials at the European Space Agency (ESA) announce that a new rocket test took place this morning, February 13, in northern Sweden. A Maser rocket carried five scientific experiments to the edge of space, providing scientists with 5 to 6 minutes of weightlessness.
The Maser-12 climbed to an altitude of about 250 kilometers (155 miles), and then returned safely to Earth. In the meantime, scientists had sufficient time to conduct their experiments. I find it particularly interesting that this rocket can leave the atmosphere in just 45 seconds.
One of the experiments aboard cooked a mixture of aluminum and copper to about 700 degrees Celsius, and then cooled it in a special chamber. This enabled an X-ray camera to snap photos as the chemicals solidified into crystal clusters similar to ice flowers.
Another experiment looked at how elements of the human immune system behaved in microgravity. Such studies could open the way for new drugs against a wide array of conditions.