  The field of planetary system formation relies extensively on our
understanding of the aerodynamic interaction between gas and dust in
protoplanetary disks. Of particular importance are the mechanisms triggering
fluid instabilities and clumping of dust particles into aggregates, and their
subsequent inclusion into planetesimals. We introduce the Timed Epstein
Multi-pressure vessel at Low Accelerations (TEMPusVoLA), which is an
experimental apparatus for the study of particle dynamics and rarefied gas
under micro-gravity conditions. This facility contains three experiments
dedicated to studying aerodynamic processes, i) the development of pressure
gradients due to collective particle-gas interaction, ii) the drag coefficients
of dust aggregates with variable particle-gas velocity, iii) the effect of dust
on the profile of a shear flow and resultant onset of turbulence. The approach
is innovative with respect to previous experiments because we access an
untouched parameter space in terms of dust particle packing fraction, and
Knudsen, Stokes, and Reynolds numbers. The mechanisms investigated are also
relevant for our understanding of the emission of dust from active surfaces
such as cometary nuclei and new experimental data will help interpreting
previous datasets (Rosetta) and prepare future spacecraft observations (Comet
Interceptor). We report on the performance of the experiments, which has been
tested over the course of multiple flight campaigns. The project is now ready
to benefit from additional flight campaigns, to cover a wide parameter space.
The outcome will be a comprehensive framework to test models and numerical
recipes for studying collective dust particle aerodynamics under space-like
conditions.
