Materials Research in Reduced Gravity 2020

INTRODUCTION Reducing gravitational effects such as thermal and solutal buoyancy enables investigation of a large range of different phenomena in materials science. Reduced gravity experiments can isolate phenomena otherwise obscured in ground-based experiments, leading to new discoveries that can improve materials and processes here on Earth. In addition to ground-based and short-term drop tower, reduced gravity aircraft or sounding rocket facilities, long-term experiments in microgravity have a long history—from the early days of spaceflight to current experiments on the International Space Station (ISS). The Materials Research in Reduced Gravity Symposium was conducted as part of the 149th TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition in San Diego, CA. It involved four sessions composed of 30 presentations with contributions from more than 12 countries. The sessions concentrated on three different categories of topics related to ongoing reduced gravity research: (1) programmatic and facility status, (2) solidification, and (3) thermophysical properties. The sessions concluded with a panel discussion on how to support upcoming activities related to the National Academies Decadal Survey. The symposium was sponsored by the TMS Extraction & Processing Division, the TMS Materials Processing & Manufacturing Division and the TMS Process Technology and Modeling Committee.