There is only one way to experience lunar gravity while still on Earth, or rather a few thousand feet above its surface: on a parabolic flight. In this exclusive mini-documentary, Space.com reporter Tereza Pultarova takes to the sky with a bunch of European scientists and one astronaut to get a taste of being on the moon, but the journey proves more challenging than she expected.
Credit: Space.com | footage courtesy: European Space Agency/Novespace/NASA
A Future Studios Production
Credit: Space.com | footage courtesy: European Space Agency/Novespace/NASA
A Future Studios Production
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TechTranscript
00:00 Humans are returning to the moon.
00:03 They haven't been there for more than 50 years.
00:06 But how do you prepare for a visit to such a different world, where your body weighs
00:10 only one sixth of its earthly weight, where everything happens in slow motion, and where
00:16 equipment carefully tested on our planet can surprise you in many unexpected ways?
00:23 It turns out that there is one way to experience the feeling of being on the moon while still
00:28 on Earth, or rather a few thousand feet above its surface.
00:32 Hello, I'm Teresa Pultarová and I'm a senior writer at Space.com and today I'm
00:39 here at Bordeaux Airport in France and behind me is a very interesting aircraft.
00:46 It's an Airbus A310.
00:48 Since 2015, the French company Novespas has been using this plane to conduct parabolic
00:54 flights, that is flights that simulate weightlessness or reduced gravity, such as lunar gravity
01:00 or Martian gravity.
01:02 And tomorrow I'm going to take part in one such flight.
01:06 Parabolic flights are best known for simulating weightlessness.
01:09 You must have seen footage of people floating around the aircraft cabin.
01:14 Pilots create these brief spells of no gravity by putting the plane into short, carefully
01:20 calculated periods of free fall as they follow a wild up and down trajectory of steep climbs
01:26 and nerve-wracking dives.
01:29 But it turns out that if you fly the parabola just a little differently, you end up feeling
01:34 like on the moon.
01:35 Or on Mars.
01:38 Apparently, this plane is the largest in the world that can be used for parabolic flights.
01:46 The cabin has been stripped of almost all of its internal equipment.
01:50 There are only a few seats left and there are almost no lockers on board.
01:54 I'm meeting Eric Dele Salle, Novespas' chief pilot and captain of my flight.
02:00 With nearly 30 years of experience piloting parabolic flights, Dele Salle is one of only
02:05 eight European men capable of executing these flights with such accuracy that generates
02:11 reduced gravity with scientific precision.
02:16 Hello I'm Teresa from space.com.
02:20 Would you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?
02:22 I will be on the flight tomorrow and I'm quite nervous about the whole thing.
02:25 No, it's absolutely no problem.
02:26 It's a great pleasure.
02:27 Please have a seat, Teresa.
02:29 I'm Eric Dele Salle, I will be the captain for the flight tomorrow.
02:32 Wonderful.
02:33 So can you tell me a little bit what's going to happen tomorrow?
02:36 Where are we going to fly and what are we going to do?
02:39 Tomorrow we will fly near the coast here, the Atlantic coast, far from Bordeaux.
02:47 We will be flying flights that simulate lunar and Martian gravity.
02:52 Is that true?
02:54 Yes.
02:55 It will not be a simulation.
02:57 It will be real apparent gravity that we have on Moon or on Mars.
03:04 So what makes a difference between a parabola that gives you the lunar gravity and the Martian
03:09 gravity or no gravity at all?
03:12 It's just a matter of how much we push on the stick.
03:16 If I give you a ball, please throw it in such a way it will stay as long as possible in
03:22 the air.
03:23 So you will throw it up and then from the time you release the ball, it will become
03:30 to fall even if still climbing at the beginning.
03:35 And then we have the zero.
03:37 We just push so that the aircraft will pull up first and then when we reach a given altitude,
03:46 we push on the stick so that the aircraft will do that as if it was falling down in
03:52 the vacuum.
03:53 That is for the zero.
03:55 And to keep lunar, it will be a little less sharp and much even less.
04:03 Unlike on your regular flight, there will be four pilots on board, three of them actively
04:08 controlling the aircraft at the same time.
04:11 One pilot will be in charge of the plane's pitch, the other will control its roll, the
04:17 third will act on the throttle.
04:20 After each set of parabolas, one pilot will take a break and will be replaced with a spare.
04:26 The difficulty is to be very accurate.
04:30 And that's our objective.
04:32 So we share the three axes on the aircraft between the three pilots.
04:37 So one is flying the pitch and it is making the zero G or the moon or Mars gravity.
04:46 And we use this kind of thing here that we put here like that.
04:53 I plug that to the radio and then so from now on, this pilot can only act on the pitch
05:02 and I cannot do that with that.
05:05 You see this one, you can do both pitch and roll and with this one, I can only use pitch.
05:15 And during that time, the other pilot will use a very technical equipment, these two
05:25 things here.
05:29 And it can act on the roll without pulling or pushing so that the two pilots are flying
05:37 the aircraft at the same time.
05:39 And the third pilot is acting on the throttle.
05:43 Let's go back in the cabin.
05:45 Preparations for tomorrow's flight are in full swing here as well.
05:50 Ten scientific teams from all over Europe are installing their equipment, making sure
05:56 it's secured in a way that it won't pose any risk during our wild ride.
06:02 Here I'm meeting Neil Melville, the European Space Agency's parabolic flight campaign coordinator,
06:08 who will serve as my minder, making sure that I, the rookie flyer, won't cause too much
06:14 chaos during the flight.
06:16 We are doing some real science here, some fundamental science, but also some technology
06:22 tests and demonstrations because these flights are going to be very special.
06:25 They're about lunar gravity and Martian gravity.
06:28 So we're testing hardware and systems that we're really going to take to the moon to
06:33 see if we can get them working the way we want in a much kind of cheaper and easier
06:36 environment than flying all the way to the moon with it.
06:39 So are there any other ways how we can simulate lunar gravity on Earth apart from being on
06:44 a plane like this?
06:46 It's not easy at all.
06:48 There are a couple of like drop tower type solutions that can do lunar gravity on a very,
06:52 very small scale, but only for a couple of seconds and only for hardware.
06:57 If you want to get yourself, to get people into lunar gravity, you have two options.
07:02 You can either come on this aircraft or you can go to the moon.
07:05 That's it.
07:06 That was all really interesting.
07:08 I think I've seen enough today and we will be back tomorrow in the morning.
07:16 Good morning.
07:17 I'm back at Bordeaux airport.
07:19 It's the 25th of April, 2023, eight in the morning.
07:23 And today is actually my 40th birthday and I'm going to celebrate it in style.
07:29 Right now I'm waiting to receive my anti-vomiting medication.
07:34 Atlantic flights are sometimes called the vomit comet.
07:39 And I will be honest with you.
07:40 Do you remember that kid that used to throw up on every school trip?
07:45 That was me.
07:46 But nevermind, this drug that I'm just going to receive cuts the risk of nausea to one
07:51 in 10 people.
07:52 So let's hope that it works for me as well.
07:55 I also need to change into my flight suit and now I'm ready to go.
08:01 We will fly west of Bordeaux, above the Atlantic Ocean, climbing to the altitude of about 20,000
08:07 feet.
08:08 That's below the cruising altitude of commercial airliners, but well above the altitude frequented
08:14 by lighter aircraft.
08:16 Our pilots will then perform four sets of seven to eight parabolas, two lunar sets and
08:21 two Martian sets.
08:23 In between, we will have only three five to eight minute breaks.
08:27 This is partial T. This is a little bit different.
08:31 What we normally fly for those that have flown before with us, please make sure you pay attention
08:36 to the safety crew, make sure that we all stay healthy and safe during the flight.
08:41 Right, we are ready to go.
08:43 Each parabola starts with a climb at a 50 degree angle to the altitude of nearly 30,000
08:49 feet.
08:50 You can hear the engines roar.
08:52 The acceleration pins your body into the floor with double the force of Earth's gravity.
08:58 It's a peculiar feeling.
09:00 But it lasts only about 20 seconds.
09:09 Then injection.
09:11 The engines stop.
09:13 Silence.
09:15 Everything slows down.
09:17 Experienced scientists don't waste any time.
09:21 But the rookies like myself can get a little carried away.
09:26 It feels magical.
09:27 This is seriously cool.
09:31 The 2G is not that cool.
09:32 I need to lie down.
09:34 The plane is descending.
09:36 Our bodies get pinned down again.
09:38 The experienced flyers stop in their tracks.
09:42 Us rookies seek a more comfortable position on the floor.
09:46 Then about a minute and a half of steady flight.
09:49 Normal gravity.
09:51 And then it starts again.
09:55 I brought with me a lunar gravity indicator.
09:58 It's a soft toy moon handmade specifically for this occasion by my colleague Daisy Dobrijevic.
10:04 In lunar gravity it spins and bounces like in slow motion.
10:09 Gradually I'm gaining more confidence.
10:12 Lunar gravity feels good.
10:14 But what will remain hard for me until the very end are the 2G phases before and after
10:20 the reduced gravity.
10:21 Wow, it's really quite interesting.
10:22 The 2G during the pull-up feels a little funny.
10:28 But yeah, wow, amazing.
10:32 For now I won't allow that to stop me enjoying this otherworldly experience.
10:37 Now it feels as if I only weigh 10 kilos.
10:41 She's right.
10:42 10 kilos.
10:43 Definitely no more than that.
10:44 Nice and easy.
10:45 Don't play with me, right?
10:46 It's time for our first break.
10:57 We are receiving a very special visitor.
11:00 One of our pilots has a break and has come to see the experiments.
11:04 He might look a little familiar.
11:06 These days he is better known for flying to the International Space Station.
11:11 One of our pilots today is actually the astronaut Tomáš Pesek.
11:15 I'm not kidding.
11:16 Could you say hi to Space.com readers?
11:17 Sure.
11:18 Hi everyone.
11:19 Nice to fly with you today.
11:20 So we're on this flight that is simulating lunar gravity.
11:24 What role will these flights have in the future Mars/Moon exploration?
11:28 It's here that we're testing everything.
11:30 As you can tell around you, there's the technology, there's the engineering, the science.
11:35 Not so much the astronauts, but they'll come at some point to train, also to prepare for
11:38 those flights and get a taste of what it's going to be like to walk on the Moon.
11:42 It's the only place on Earth that you can test with people around their experiments
11:47 and experience what it feels like to walk on the Moon.
11:50 So that's where it starts and it's all going to happen up there.
11:54 And while I'm trying to survive the uncomfortable 2G phase on the padded floor again, Tomáš
11:59 Pesek has a go piloting a device that might one day help astronauts transport equipment
12:05 on the Moon's surface.
12:08 For me, things are soon going to get a little difficult.
12:11 We're more than halfway through.
12:13 We have finished all our lunar parabolas and also one set of the Martian parabolas and
12:19 we still have one Martian set to go.
12:23 I find the 2G during the pull-up particularly challenging, but so far so good.
12:30 I didn't have to use my back yet, so it's all good.
12:34 Despite the strong medicine that I had received before the flight, I lived up to my childhood
12:39 reputation and once again was the sickest kid on the trip.
12:43 But in the meantime, all science teams completed their tasks without much difficulty.
12:48 When the final parabola finally arrived, I was relieved.
12:52 1G felt good.
12:54 It was a two-hour roller coaster and certainly the most intense thing I have done in my whole
13:00 life.
13:01 It would take me a while to process the experience.
13:17 So now I know what it feels like to walk on the Moon and Mars.
13:22 I will certainly remember this experience for the rest of my life.
13:25 But right now, I'm quite happy to have my feet back on the ground of our very special
13:31 planet Earth.
13:32 Thank you for watching.
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