The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) recently released a breathtaking video of an experiment conducted by the Artemis II crew while aboard the Orion capsule in space.
The experiment explains what happens to a drop of water if it is released in an almost weightless environment in space.
The crew aboard the lunar mission found time to play with a drop of water and released it into the air to see how it behaves in the weightlessness of space.
The video shows the drop floating in the capsule in the form of a perfect sphere, like a crystal clear ball. The drop was later captured via straw and released into microgravity.
NASA said: “During the Artemis II mission, the astronauts had a fun time playing in the weightlessness of space. The mission was Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen’s first space flight – so his crew members taught him a lot about the physics of water in space.”
If a drop of water is dropped on Earth, it flattens on the surface due to gravity; but in space the phenomenon is different because the molecules on the surface attract each other equally in all directions and make it a sphere.
Space enthusiasts seemed delighted by the video, with one saying: “Space can’t be serious – you’ve got to have a bit of fun too.” Another said: “It felt like pure magic.”
