The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) announced today the winners of their joint opportunity to conduct experiments on board the China Space Station (CSS).

Six winning projects were selected, and three were conditionally selected. They were carefully evaluated by a team of around 60 experts from UNOOSA, CMSA and the international space community.

Variety of countries

The winning institutions come from a variety of countries, including Belgium, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Kenya, the Netherlands, Norway, Mexico, Poland, Peru, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Spain and Switzerland.

The selected winners will have the chance to physically access space by flying their experiment on the CSS, developing their capabilities in space science and technology.

Next call for experiments?

CMSA Director-General, Chun Hao, said in a UNOOSA press statement: CMSA stands ready to help the winning teams prepare and implement their experiments on board of the Station. CMSA is working closely with UNOOSA to further our existing cooperation and create more opportunities to enhance access to space: for example, we are thinking of releasing the next call for experiments in the near future.”

Experiments selected

The following 6 proposals are ACCEPTED:

No. 1: POLAR-2: Gamma-Ray Burst Polarimetry on the China Space Station

This is an experiment project in astronomy in space.It was applied and will be implemented by four institutions from four countries, which are:The University of Geneva from Switzerland, the National Centre for Nuclear Research of Poland,the Max Plank Institute for Extra-terrestrial Physics of Germany, and the Institute of High Energy Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

No. 2: Spectroscopic Investigations of Nebular Gas (SING)

This is an experiment in astronomy in space. It was applied and will be implemented by two institutions from two countries, which are: The Indian Institute of Astrophysics, and the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

No.3: Behaviour of Partially Miscible Fluid in Microgravity

This is an experiment in microgravity fluid physics and combustion. It was applied and will be implemented by two organizations from two countries, namely the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) and the University Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in Belgium.

No.4: Flame Instabilities Affected by Vortices and Acoustic Waves (FIAVAW)

This is an experiment project in microgravity fluid physics and combustion. It was jointly applied and will be jointly implemented by two institutions from two countries, which are: Tsinghua University from China and the University of Tokyo from Japan.

No.5: Tumours in Space: Signatures of early mutational events due to space-flight conditions on 3D organoid cultures derived from intra-individual healthy and tumour tissue

This is an experiment project in space life sciences and biotechnology. It was jointly applied and will be jointly implemented by four institutions from four countries, namely the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, International Space University, Vrije University Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and the Belgium Nuclear Research Centre.

No. 6: Effect of Microgravity on the Growth and Biofilm Production of Disease-Causing Bacteria

This is an experiment project in space life sciences and bio-technology. It was jointly applied and will be jointly implemented by the Mars Society – Peru Chapter, and the Mars Society – Spain Chapter.

Conditionally accepted

The following 3 proposals are CONDITIONALLY ACCEPTED,which signifies that the applicants will be given the opportunity to quickly update their respective excellent proposal, so they fully comply with detailed specifications of the CSS. They are:

No.7: Mid infrared platform for Earth observations

This is an experiment project in Earth science in space. It was jointly applied and will be jointly implemented by two organizations from one country, which are: the National Institute of Astrophysics Optics and Electronics (INAOE), and Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP) from Mexico.

No.8: Development of Multi-Junction GaAs Solar Cells for Space Applications

This is an experiment project in space utilization technology. It was jointly applied and will be jointly implemented by two institutions from one country, which are: the National Centre for Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials, and the King Abdelaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) from Saudi Arabia.

No. 9: BARIDISANA – High Performance Micro 2-Phase Cooling System for Space Applications

This is an experiment in microgravity fluid physics and combustion. It was applied and will be implemented by two institutions from two countries, which are: the Sapienza University of Rome in Italy, and the Machakos University in Kenya.