ISS experiment

What is GraviTE?

It is a project of a bioreactor that will support cell cultures onboard the ISS. All the parts from core board to hydraulics are designed by our team. We have also designed our own purpose-specific Culture Chambers, in which the cells can grow properly.  We also used a rapid prototyping and Concurrent Engineering approach in order to verify our ideas and test the different setups faster. The design incorporates neat assembly of flight-heritage parts, that makes it easy to separate electronics and hydraulics, as well as provides good mounting of our Multi Layer Insulation and an easy access for our teammates to put all elements in place before tests or launch.

Project begun as a research for "Direction Space" contest that will select Polish experiments to go to International Space Station! Direction Earth/Space is an ESA initiative within which the contest for students' ISS experiments was introduced by Sławosz Uznański - the polish astroanut.

I am very happy to take part in the project of GraviTE with AGH Space Systems as Mechanical and Materials Engineering Team Leader.

2024:

Summer 2024 :

Over the summer of 2024 our team is rapidly progressing in building the experiment. Software, hardware, electronics, hydraulic system and biolocical payload-it all has to work together seamlessly! In the mechanical division of GraviTE team, where I am the leader we aim to not only finish the hardware and hydraulic system for the experiment, but also to publish a paper describing our experiments on materials and selction processes.

March-June 2024 :

GraviTE experiment prepared by our team from AGH Space Systems won the competition on 10.03.2024 and got selected as one of the three experiments eligible to go to the ISS!

I am extremely proud to be a part of this team. Right now together with mentors and companies taking part in this endavour we will prepare our experiment as good as we can in order to send it to space!

2023 :

GraviTE project is in constant development. The main objective of GraviTE (Gravity-free Tissue Engineering) aims to study stem cells embedded on polymer scaffolds in the form of disks or microspheres in microgravity and to develop tissue engineering techniques using variable gravity.

The very challenging aspect of this experiment is to comply with industry standard for ISS experiments and creating a functional bioreactor that will be operational in ISS-specific conditions, will support medium exchange for cell culture and conform with safety restrictions at the same time.

Currently the team is developing and iterating the design in order to prepare for future challanges of the design.