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To date, the method for astronauts to drink liquids in microgravity or weightless environments is to suck the liquid from a bag or pouch through a straw. A new beverage cup works in microgravity and allows astronauts to drink liquids from a cup in a manner consistent with that on Earth. The cup is capable of holding beverages with an angled channel running along the wall from the bottom to the lip. In microgravity, a beverage is placed into the cup using the galley dispenser. The angled channel acts as an open passage that contains only two sides where capillary forces move the liquid along the channel until it reaches the top lip where the forces reach an equilibrium and the flow stops. When one sips the liquid at the lip of the channel, the capillary force equilibrium is upset and more liquid flows to the lip from the reservoir at the bottom to re-establish the equilibrium. This sipping process can continue until the total liquid contents of the cup is consumed, leaving only a few residual drops about the same quantity as in a ceramic cup when it is drunk dry on Earth.

Mathematical theory predicts that small changes in container shape or in contact angle can give rise to large shifts of liquid in a microgravity environment. For studying such shifts, container shapes are described that were flown on board the Space Shuttle USML-2 mission as part of the Glovebox Interface Configuration Experiment. These containers are in the form of a circular cylinder with two diametrically opposed "canonical proboscis" protrusions. The containers were designed with the goal of having two desirable properties -that sufficient liquid would participate in the shift to permit easy observation, and that the change would be abrupt enough to allow accurate determination of critical contact angle. The observed behavior for these vessels is depicted, along with behavior for a movable wedge vessel, which also formed part of the experiment. The experimental results support the validity of the concept of macroscopic contact angle, basic to the theory, and thereby its use in predicting fluid behavior under reduced gravity. The results indicate, as well, the role of hysteresis in impeding orientation to equilibrium.

The Interface Configuration Experiment (ICE) is part of a multifaceted study that is exploring the often striking behavior of liquid-vapor interfaces in low-gravity environments. Although the experiment was posed largely as a test of current mathematical theory, applications of the results should be manifold. In space almost every fluid system is affected, if not dominated, by capillarity (the effects of surface tension). As a result, knowledge of fluid interface behavior, in particular an equilibrium interface shape from which any analysis must begin, is fundamental--from the control of liquid fuels and oxygen in storage tanks to the design and development of inspace thermal systems, such as heat pipes and capillary pumped loops. ICE has increased, and should continue to increase, such knowledge as it probes the specific peculiarities of current theory upon which our present understanding rests. Several versions of ICE have been conducted in the drop towers at the NASA Lewis Research Center, on the space shuttles during the first and second United States Microgravity Laboratory missions (USML-1 and USML-2), and most recently aboard the Russian Mir space station. These studies focused on interfacial problems concerning the existence, uniqueness, configuration, stability, and flow characteristics of liquid-vapor interfaces. Results to date have clearly demonstrated the value of the present theory and the extent to which it can predict the behavior of capillary systems.

The mathematical basis for the forthcoming Angular Liquid Bridge investigation on board Mir is described. Our mathematical work is based on the classical Young-Laplace-Gauss formulation for an equilibrium free surface of liquid partly filling a container or otherwise in contact with solid support surfaces. The anticipated liquid behavior used in the apparatus design is also illustrated.

We describe here some of our recent mathematical work, which forms a basis for the Interface Configuration Experiment scheduled for USML-2. The work relates to the design of apparatus that exploits microgravity conditions for accurate determination of contact angle. The underlying motivation for the procedures rests on a discontinuous dependence of the capillary free surface interface S on the contact angle gamma, in a cylindrical capillary tube whose section (base) omega contains a protruding corner with opening angle 2 alpha. Specifically, in a gravity-free environment, omega can be chosen so that, for all sufficiently large fluid volume, the height of S is uniquely determined as a (single-valued) function mu(x,y) entirely covering the base; the height mu is bounded over omega uniformly in gamma throughout the range absolute value of (gamma -(pion/2)) less than or equal to alpha, while for absolute value of (gamma - (pion/2)) greater than alpha fluid will necessarily move to the corner and uncover the base, rising to infinity (or falling to negative infinity) at the vertex, regardless of volume. We mention here only that procedures based on the phenomenon promise excellent accuracy when gamma is close pion/2 but may be subject to experimental error when gamma is close to zero (orpion), as the 'singular' part of the domain over which the fluid accumulates (or disappears) when a critical angle gamma theta is crossed then becomes very small and may be difficult to observe. We ignore the trivial case gamma is equal to pion/2 (planar free surface), to simplify the discussion.

The possible zero-gravity equilibrium configurations of capillary surfaces u(x, y) in cylindrical containers whose sections are (wedge) domains with corners are investigated mathematically, for the case in which the contact angles on the two sides of the wedge may differ. In such a situation the behavior can depart in significant qualitative ways from that for which the contact angles on the two sides are the same. Conditions are described under which such qualitative changes must occur. Numerically computed surfaces are depicted to indicate the behavior.

The Interface Configuration Experiment (ICE) was carried out on USML-1 to investigate liquid-gas interfaces in certain rotationally-symmetric containers having prescribed, mathematically derived shapes. These containers have the property that they admit an entire continuum of distinct equilibrium rotationally-symmetric interfaces for a given liquid volume and contact angle. Furthermore, it can be shown that none of these interfaces can be stable. It was found, after the containers were filled in orbit, that an initial equilibrium interface from the symmetric continuum re-oriented, when perturbed, to a stable interface that was not rotationally symmetric, in accordance with the mathematical theory.