Next Blue Origin Rocket Will Carry Two Microgravity Experiments

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin company is planning to launch yet another round-trip rocket, but this time, it looks like the rocket will include a little something extra on board, namely a pair of microgravity experiments. It makes sense for Blue Origin’s scientists to take advantage of this unique opportunity to conduct these experiments, as microgravity is not exactly easy to simulate here on Earth. Each one of these experiments will make use of microgravity conditions in their own way. One of them is the Box of Rocks Experiment (BORE) created by the Southwest Research Institute, which aims to investigate what happens to rocky soil on small asteroids.

The other one is the Collisions Into Dust Experiment (COLLIDE), which was put together by a team of students from the University of Central Florida. This experiment will involve capturing video of a marble hitting a bed of dust in low gravity in order to see how the particles move. The setup required to execute and observe these experiments was provided by Nanoracks, which has previously worked on a series of NASA experiments. The news regarding these microgravity experiments was revealed by Jeff Bezos himself via Twitter.

Two university microgravity experiments on tomorrow’s @blueorigin flight. Short vids: https://t.co/lHW6lsqCAY https://t.co/VAYuFJRk7H

— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) April 1, 2016

You can have a look at the following videos in order to get a better idea of what these experiments are all about.