European materials science investigations and associated experimental equipment within the Spacelab demonstration missions

This paper reviews shortly the results obtained by a preliminary call for experiment proposals for future Spacelab flights issued by the European Space Agency in April 1978. The results of this call indicate clearly the trend towards experiments performing studies on the state and the evolution of fluid media. The instrumentation used are mainly multipurpose instruments (furnaces, process chambers) already under development for the first Spacelab flight and new equipment currently under study.