Fig. 4: The future of space exploration for active matter.
From: Active matter in space
In the near future (<3 years), we can expect an increase in active matter experiments on the International Space Station (ISS) in low Earth orbit (LEO) based on using or adapting existing instrumentation for soft matter studies in microgravity. The main advantage of running active matter experiments on the ISS is the possibility of studying these systems under microgravity conditions for up to several hours. In the mid (5–10 years) and long term (>10 years), fitting this instrumentation on Moon, Mars and Beyond-Low-Earth-Orbit (BLEO) missions (e.g., on the Lunar Gateway) will enable testing active matter for the future of space exploration and colonisation on even longer time scales (up to a few years or longer). Moon picture credit: ESA/Hubble; use permitted under a CC-BY 4.0 licence. Mars picture credit: ESA/Hubble; use permitted under a CC-BY 4.0 licence.
