Drawing Fibre in Space

Wednesday 31st January 03:37 AM ACDT (30th of January, 12:07 PM EST), a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch to the International Space Station from Florida with some very special cargo – the miniaturised fibre draw tower module developed by our industry partner, Flawless Photonics, and 20 ZBLAN glass rods and preforms produced by our own Optofab Adelaide team led by Professor Heike Ebendorff-Heidepriem at IPAS. The module will be installed in a glove box on the ISS, ready to draw space ZBLAN fibre from the IPAS-produced glass rods and preforms.

This momentous occasion has been over two years in the making, with the team at Flawless Photonics overcoming multiple challenges to successfully develop, build and test the miniaturised fibre draw tower. Professor Ebendorff-Heidepriem's team has also been working tirelessly to supply them with all the ZBLAN glass rods and preforms required for terrestrial testing and space fibre fabrication.

Zero-gravity fibre fabrication is expected to begin in early February. The team at Flawless Photonics is hoping to fabricate hundreds of metres of ZBLAN fibres, which would set a new world record for the longest continuous fibre drawn in space. Once the space-drawn fibres return to Earth, the team here at IPAS will have the honour of performing various analyses and experiments on the fibres.

We wish Flawless Photonics a smooth and successful mission!