Heavy particles forming two thin structures
Heavy particles forming a central structure
Light particles forming two small structures
Heavy particles displaying a transition from two formations to a single structure
Light particles forming four independent structures
Heavy particles forming a single structure close to the left wall
After the hardware installation, more than 160 different experiments were executed over a period of three months (February-April 2023).
Throughout the duration of the Project, the “data”, i.e. all the telemetry (temperature) files and images (showing the evolution of the vibrated particles in time) generated by the interferometers of the SODI hardware were transferred from the ISS to the Principal Investigator (located in UK) through a complex infrastructure, involving the NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, located in Huntsville, Alabama, USA (also known as the Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC)) and the E-USOC, located in Madrid Spain (one of the ESA User Support and Operations Centres).
The hard disks containing all the data generated during the execution of the experiments were returned to Earth during June 2023 in the framework of the SpaceX Dragon CRS-28 mission. The Dragon undocked from the ISS Thursday June 29 at 12:30 p.m. EDT (1630 GMT), while the two spacecraft were flying over the northeastern Indian Ocean west of Indonesia. The SpaceX capsule then headed back to its home planet and made a parachute-aided splashdown off the Florida coast on June 30 around 10:30 a.m. EDT (1430 GMT), as planned.