FIVE YEARS OF UTILISATION OF THE EUROPEAN PHYSIOLOGY MODULES FACILITY (EPM)

摘要

The European Physiology Modules (EPM) is the research facility for human physiology experiments within the European Columbus laboratory which is permanently attached to the International Space Station. The EPM was launched inside the Columbus laboratory in 2008. Within the first five years of operations EPM has supported a total number of twelve different experiments. The design of the multiuser facility EPM is based on a high modularity and flexibility for interfacing experiments. Due to these design features it was possible that recently the research field of the EPM has been expanded to experiments of physical sciences. This paper provides an overview of the EPM design concepts, the subsystems, the different models and the utilization of EPM over the last five years including brief descriptions of already supported experiments and future experiments which are being integrated.