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12:00 13:30

We begin the experiment. Engineer Omer Luria and I We land. We disconnect
designed the system, so we operate it: the moment the capsules from the
I hear “zero G” over the intercom, I release the
gallium from the capsules, and we have 20 seconds system and clean them in
of weightlessness in which the lens is formed. In that preparation for the next
short amount of time, we want to obtain a mirror with
a specific radius of curvature, so Omer activates a parabolic flight, which will
camera with a special electro-optical sensor that tracks be tomorrow.
the mirror’s formation and checks its properties.

15:00

Prof. Bercovici starts examining the
results with PhD students Mor Elgarisi

and Israel Gabay and with Dr. Valeri
Frumkin, post-doctoral fellow at MIT
and former lab member who was one
of the authors of the study. It’s very
intensive work, but we are excited and

full of adrenaline.

17:00

We work to prepare the new capsules and discuss what worked
and what didn’t. On the previous flights, we saw the lenses
being formed with our own eyes and could see, for instance, if air
bubbles formed that would ruin the mirror. This time, due to the
limitations of the optical system, we have only a partial idea. Omer
performs preliminary processing on one of the pictures from the
optical sensor: Success! The mirror is rounded, just as the theory
predicted. We’ll see the full picture only once we’re back in Israel,
after we finish the complete analysis.

22:00

We return to the hotel and sit down to dinner. In
other professions, you go home, shower and end

your day. It’s not like that for us. Our workday is
never really over. Even when I’m sitting in front of the

TV, I’m thinking about what didn’t work or trying to
understand the meaning of the results.

Faculty of Mechanical Engineering | MEgazine | 35