Activity of comets under partial gravity

Based on the exploration of the space, also the predictions about the activities of small astronomical objects like comets or asteroids must be examined. Not only economical and safety-related considerations are important but also the gain of knowledge about comet-surface behaviour.  With respect to this, the mass loss of comets depending on temperature and pressure must be investigated more precisely. For this, the investigation of comet-like samples require conditions which are similar to the environment of those. This means that a very small gravitational accelaration and a high vacuum quality are desired. Therefore, together with the Einstein-Elevator, a further driven platform connected with a vacuum chamber must be developed and implemented to achieve these conditions. Besides of the aim to gain knowlegde concerning the surface activity of comets, another one is to enable the smallest accelerations (<< 0.1 g) that are resulting with the technical expansion of the Einstein-Elevator. As a result, new investigation fields, for instance asteroid-mining, could be accessible. The project is being processed by the Institute of Transport and Automation Technology (ITA) at Leibniz University Hannover in cooperation with the Institute of Geophysics and Extraterrestrial Physics (IGEP) at Technical University of Braunschweig.