PK-4 –COMPLEX PLASMA RESEARCH ON THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

Abstract

The International Space Station (ISS) is the outpost of mankind in low-Earth orbit, and has been permanently manned by three to six astronauts since the end of 2000. It is the world’s biggest international project yet, bringing together partners from Russia, America, Europe, Japan and Canada. It was built following a political decision after the Cold War and provides a platform for fundamental research in life and physical sciences, for Earth observation and astronomy. Recently it became the platform for preparing the next steps in the quest for longer deep-space manned missions to the Moon and Mars.

PK-4 is an active laboratory for fundamental research in the field of complex plasmas and part of the European Columbus Module. The project is a bilateral European-Russian collaboration. Scientists from Europe, Russia and also other nations worldwide benefit from this project. They participate in experiments, the analysis of resulting data and contribute to theoretical and numerical modelling. Experiments with PK-4 are carried out in frequent campaigns on the ISS. In 2019 three such campaigns totalling 12 experiment days were performed, producing about 9 TB of high quality scientific data.