A compact device the size of two coffee mugs, launched from Earth last fall, has returned from the International Space Station with answers to a question that only space can answer: how do particles really behave when gravity stops pulling.
The experiment, conceived by undergraduate students and led by University of Delaware assistant professor Tyler Van Buren, spent months in orbit studying the hidden relationship between particles and turbulent flow. Understanding this relationship matters everywhere on Earth—from dust in the air to sand in coastal zones and bubbles at the sea surface, particles are constantly reshaping how flows move. But on Earth, gravity is always in the way, making it impossible to study particles in isolation. In microgravity, that interference vanishes, revealing something fundamental about fluid dynamics that no ground-based lab can show.
Van Buren explains the concept with a memorable image: "The crowd would behave differently if they were holding large exercise balls versus heavy boulders. In turbulence, the fluid motion can similarly carry particles. We're interested in how the particle weight changes the turbulence."
The journey to space began in spring 2022, when Van Buren's undergraduate team started designing the autonomous device. Then-graduate students Frank Tricouros and Tony Liang, who earned their doctorates in mechanical engineering from UD in 2025 and 2023 respectively, took on key leadership roles as the project evolved. What emerged was a self-contained system packed into a remarkably small space: fluid chambers, particles, lasers, cameras, and onboard computing all fitted together so tightly that the entire apparatus occupied roughly the volume of two coffee mugs. The device had to operate completely on its own in orbit, collecting video data without human intervention.
Getting that device to space required navigating an entirely different kind of turbulence. Branden Swanik, a biomedical engineering student working on his senior capstone, took on the challenge of figuring out how to launch the experiment. "I had no idea where to start," Swanik recalled. "You can't just order a rocket." He began reaching out to mission management companies and eventually connected with Nanoracks, now Voyager Technologies, which agreed to handle the launch. Swanik's connections to the company became so strong that he joined it as an employee after graduating from UD in 2023, bringing his expertise in satellite missions back to support the UD project.
Before launch, the device underwent an extraordinarily rigorous safety review required for any equipment operating aboard a crewed space station. "Even a single wire is measured down to a hundredth of a millimeter," Swanik said. After passing that scrutiny, the experiment caught a ride aboard the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's HTV-X1 spacecraft, which launched on October 26, 2025.
The device survived the violent forces of rocket launch, the journey across multiple continents, and installation in orbit. When it began operating aboard the space station, the team faced a waiting game: limited bandwidth meant they couldn't stream video back to Earth in real time. Instead, they watched for indirect signals—distinct spikes in power consumption indicating the system was cycling through its programmed stages as planned. That the experiment worked at all, after everything it endured, was itself remarkable.
Now, with the device back on campus and its video data finally extracted and ready for analysis, Van Buren's team stands at the threshold of discoveries that could reshape how scientists understand particle-laden turbulence. The answer to how particles truly behave without gravity's influence has finally come home.