As the temperature variation affects the experiments results, NTE has developed and built the GCF-2 that consists of a Sample Container housing the crystallisation experiments within 3 layer capillaries and/or a new GCB-2 both developed and supplied by the company Triana Science and Technology and an Electronics Unit accommodating the electronics and the thermal subsystem that provides a thermally-controlled environment of 20 ºC to the samples. The GCF-2 was successfully launched inside Foton M3 on September 14th from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and performed nominally during the 12-day orbital flight. The behaviour of the GCF-2 throughout the mission was monitored from the Korolev Mission Support Centre in Moscow by NTE and European Space Agency (ESA) personnel. The landing site of the re-entry capsule was near the city of Kustanay (Kazakhstan) on September 25th, from where the GCF-2 and the rest of European payloads onboard Foton M3 were transported by a chartered aircraft to the ESTEC facilities in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. Presently, the group of scientists of the GCF-2 led by the LEC is evaluating the preliminary results of the mission. |
