Large diameter centrifuges are used to understand the effect of hyper-gravity (gravitational strengths stronger than that of the Earth) on biological samples, including and not limiting to plants, organs, bacteria, and astronauts (Such as NASA's Human Performance Centrifuge) or non-biological samples to undertake experiments in the field of fluid dynamics, geology, biochemistry and more.
[1][2] Frequently, "LDC" is used to refer to the centrifuge at the European Space Agency (ESA)'s campus known as ESTEC (European Space research and TEChnology center).
A total of six gondolas, each being able to carry an 80 kg payload, can spin at a maximum of 20 times Earth's gravity, equaling 67 revolutions per minute.
[5] The European Space Agency (ESA) and UNOOSA lets students compete with a research proposal for the use of the LDC.
Support is given for a variety of different fields including biology, physics and chemistry.