Shooting for the stars as Scottish space station work aims for ‘unobtanium’

Scientists are to start a project that could see new materials created in space with properties impossible to develop on Earth.

The University of Strathclyde-led experiment will be carried out on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2021 after getting £1.3 million in funding from the UK Space Agency.

It will take advantage of the micro-gravity environment to create alloys or medicines with properties that cannot be made on Earth.

Marcello Lappa, who is leading the project, said: “With these experiments we aim to investigate how, by shaking a complex fluid in microgravity conditions, we can create materials with structures that we cannot make on Earth.

“These experiments will lead to advanced contactless manipulation strategies for the assembly of new materials and alloys. They may even shed some new light on the mechanisms supporting the formation of asteroids and planets.”

The team will investigate complex fluids, which can be formed by adding fine particles to a liquid to show peculiar properties.

Engineers believe it could be a big step forward in the production of so-called unobtanium – a notion of a material with amazing properties that does not exist on Earth.