April 4, 2017
Dynasil Corporation of America (NASDAQ: DYSL) today announced that its subsidiary Radiation Monitoring Devices, Inc. (RMD) has research included in the CASIS Orbital ATK CRS-7 payload of the latest resupply mission to the International Space Station. The purpose of the RMD payload is to conduct a series of experiments to grow scintillator crystals in microgravity. Scintillators excite when exposed to certain types of radiation and can be used in detectors, for safety monitoring or homeland security applications.
“We are very excited about RMD’s world-class research being conducted in space,” said Peter Sulick, Dynasil’s CEO and President. “Our CLYC (cesium lithium yttrium chloride) scintillator is being used to distinguish harmless sources of radiation from harmful radiation such as smuggled uranium-235 used in for nuclear weapons. To the extent the properties of this material can be improved by being grown in space, it may lead to a new applications and growth methods for this and other synthetic compounds in the future.”
This investigation will leverage the modernized Solidification Using a Baffle in Sealed Ampoules (SUBSA) furnace, which operates inside the ISS Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG). The RMD investigations are sponsored by the Center of Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) with implementation partners Tec-Masters, Inc. and Teledyne Brown Engineering.
“An experiment like ours can take only a few kilograms of payload and use universal hardware and platforms like the SUBSA furnace which are already on the space station and accomplish our scientific results,” said Alexei Churilov, Ph.D., of RMD. “So for RMD, we are getting clear practical value – the results will be utilized in our production processes almost immediately.”
Additional information on the International Space Station and this experiment in the CASIS press release, and at https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/2353.html.
While the resupply mission was originally scheduled for March, 2017, it has been postponed to April 18, 2017 due to a technical problem with the launch vehicle.
Click here to learn more about this important NASA research project.