It consists of two heated cavities separated by an adiabatic zone. The LGF is designed mainly for Bridgman crystal growth of semiconductor materials. The major characteristics of the two produced Furnace Inserts are: On the outer envelope of this assembly is a water-cooled metal jacket forming the mechanical interface to the Core Facility.
The Core Facility supports FIs with up to eight heating elements, and provides the mechanical, thermal and electrical infrastructure necessary to handle the FIs, the Sample Cartridge Assembly (SCA), together with any associated experiment-dedicated electronics that may be required.Ī FI is an arrangement of heating elements, isolating zones and cooling zones contained in a thermal insulation assembly. Processing normally takes place under vacuum. The FI can be moved with a dedicated drive mechanism, to process each sample according to requirements from the scientists. Another furnace, the Solidification and Quenching Furnace (SQF) is already produced and waiting on ground for future operations. During the first batch of experiments the Low Gradient Furnace (LGF) is installed. It can house several different Furnace Inserts. The processing chamber provides an accurately controlled processing environment and measurement of microgravity levels. The Core Facility consists mainly of a vacuum-tight stainless steel cylinder ( Process Chamber) capable of accommodating different individual Furnace Inserts (FIs), within which sample processing is carried out. The MSL consists of a Core Facility, together with associated support sub-systems. It occupies one half of an International Standard Payload Rack. The Materials Science Laboratory (MSL) facility is the contribution of the European Space Agency to NASA's MSRR-1. After bringing those two samples back to ground for analysis by the scientists the rest of the samples from batch 1 will be processed in early 2010. The commissioning included the processing of the first two samples which took place at the beginning of November. It was transferred from the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module to the Destiny Laboratory shortly after the shuttle docked to the International Space Station some two days after launch.Īfter that the commissioning activities started to check out first the functionality of the Materials Science Research Rack and MSL inside MSRR. MSL was launched with Space Shuttle Discovery on its STS-128 mission at the end of August 2009.