A300 Zero-G
Introduction
Parabolic flights are used to conduct short-term microgravity scientific and technological investigations, to test instrumentation prior to use in space, to validate operational and experimental procedures, and to train astronauts for a future space flight.
copyright ESA/M.Specht
Such flights are conducted on specially-configured aircraft, and provide a period of up to 20 seconds of reduced gravity or weightlessness. During a flight campaign, which normally consists of three individual flights, around 30 parabolas are flown on each flight, i.e. around 90 parabolas in total. On each parabola, there is a period of increased gravity (1.8 g) which lasts for 20 seconds immediately prior to and following the 20 second period of reduced gravity.
Parabolic flights are the only sub-orbital carrier to provide the opportunity to carry out medical experiments on human subjects under conditions of weightlessness, complementing studies conducted in space, and on the ground (e.g. immersion, bed-rest) under simulated weightlessness conditions.
Advantages
The major advantages of parabolic flights to researchers are:
- Short lead-time: Typically a few months between research proposal and flight;
- Low cost: ESA covers the cost of the flight opportunity to those research proposals selected for flight;
- Flexible research approach: Laboratory-type instrumentation is most commonly used;
- Direct intervention: Investigators onboard the aircraft can interact with their experiments between and even during each parabola;
- Experiment modification: It is possible to modify the basic set-up of the experiment between each flight, as normally the three flights of a campaign occur on consecutive days.
History
ESA began flying parabolic flight campaigns in 1984. From this time up to 1988, a total of six campaigns were carried out from the Ellington airfield in Houston (Texas), using a NASA KC-135 aircraft.
In 1988, the French space agency CNES made its Caravelle zero-g aircraft available to ESA, and between this time and 1995 fifteen ESA parabolic campaigns were conducted.
Once, in 1994, ESA also flew one campaign on a Russian Ilyushin IL-76 MDK.
In 1996 ESA performed its 23rd campaign out of Bordeaux using a NASA KC-135 aircraft, and performed its 24th campaign using the newly available Airbus A-300 Zero-G aircraft of CNES in September 1997, and it is this aircraft that has been used ever since. The Airbus A-300 Zero-G is operated out of the Bordeaux-Mérignac airport by the company Novespace.