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Meanwhile, a beautiful marble-patterned water ball has been created in weightless space in which green, yellow, and red ink was added to a liquid sphere using a painting technique known as suminagashi (marbling with sumi ink). Although the suminagashi technique has been well-known throughout the world for centuries, the outcome of the experiment performed in September 2008 was truly fascinating. The technique applied in space yielded overlapping marble patterns on liquid balls, giving the art a three-dimensional appearance.

On the day of the experiment, an astronaut traveled among the experiment modules of Japan and other countries, preparing water to make liquid spheres. Due to water's surface tension (the force of the molecules pulling together, reducing the surface area) and the lack of gravity, water floats about in space in spherical shapes. The spheres of water for the experiments were made within a wire loop to keep the water from floating away. To shape the balls, increasing amounts of water were fed from a tube, resulting in a roughly 8-centimeter ball of water in around ten minutes. Although mixing ink in a weightless environment is a challenge, wouldn't it be great to create your own work of art in space?