NASA's Complex Fluids/Soft Matter Program Overview*

The presentation will provide an overview of the current and future microgravity Complex Fluids/Soft Matter Program including solicitation plans. The presentation will also include future solicitations for the NASA Physical Sciences Informatics Program.  

NASA’s goal is to establish a soft matter/complex fluids science community through ground based and flight opportunities. Over the next several years, the BPS Division plans to release ground-based NASA Research Announcements (NRAs) followed by flight NRAs targeting the ISS and possibly other platforms.  In parallel, NASA intends to develop a new ISS microscope to enable reduced gravity studies of colloids, granular media, foams, liquid crystals, polymer solutions, etc. The microscope unit will have the capability of applying external fields.

This research is intended to enable themes that emerge from the National Academy of Sciences Decadal Survey, due in mid-2023. The decadal soft matter topics are likely to include research areas emphasized in the March 2021 APS/NASA Workshop Report entitled:  Grand Challenges in Soft Matter Science: Prospects for Microgravity Research, NASA/CP-20205010493

Three overarching themes emerged from the workshop:

• Machines made out of machines

• Scalable self-sustaining ecosystems

• Active materials and metamaterials 

This report lays out only some of the potential directions for soft matter dynamics over the next two

decades. It also describes the role that gravity plays in the organization of the basic building blocks of

matter.  Not only will research on soft matter have tremendous application towards understanding its

behavior in our terrestrial environment, but could potentially influence other NASA programs such as planetary science, exploration, robotics, etc.