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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00:00Humans are returning to the moon.
00:03They haven't been there for more than 50 years.
00:06But how do you prepare for a visit to such a different world, where your body weighs
00:10only one-sixth of its earthly weight, where everything happens in slow motion, and where
00:16equipment carefully tested on our planet can surprise you in many unexpected ways?
00:23It turns out that there is one way to experience the feeling of being on the moon while still
00:28on Earth, or rather, a few thousand feet above its surface.
00:32Hello, I'm Teresa Pultarova and I'm a senior writer at Space.com, and today I'm
00:39here at Bordeaux Airport in France, and behind me is a very interesting aircraft.
00:46It's an Airbus A310.
00:48Since 2015, the French company Novespas has been using this plane to conduct parabolic
00:54flights, that is, flights that simulate weightlessness or reduced gravity, such as lunar gravity
01:00or Martian gravity.
01:02And tomorrow I'm going to take part in one such flight.
01:06Parabolic flights are best known for simulating weightlessness.
01:10You must have seen footage of people floating around the aircraft cabin.
01:14Pilots create these brief spells of no gravity by putting the plane into short, carefully
01:20calculated periods of free fall, as they follow a wild up and down trajectory of steep
01:26climbs and nerve-wracking dives.
01:29But it turns out that if you fly the parabola just a little differently, you end up feeling
01:34like on the moon, or on Mars.
01:38Apparently, this plane is the largest in the world that can be used for parabolic flights.
01:46The cabin has been stripped of almost all of its internal equipment.
01:50There are only a few seats left, and there are almost no lockers on board.
01:54I'm meeting Eric De La Salle, Novespas' chief pilot and captain of my flight.
02:00With nearly 30 years of experience piloting parabolic flights, De La Salle is one of only
02:05eight European men capable of executing these flights with such accuracy that generates
02:11reduced gravity with scientific precision.
02:16Hello, I'm Teresa from Space.com.
02:20Would you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?
02:22I will be on the flight tomorrow, and I'm quite nervous about the whole thing.
02:25No, it's absolutely no problem, it's a great pleasure.
02:28Please have a seat, Teresa.
02:29I'm Eric De La Salle, I will be the captain for the flight tomorrow.
02:32Wonderful.
02:33So, can you tell me a little bit what's going to happen tomorrow?
02:36Where are we going to fly, and what are we going to do?
02:39Tomorrow we will fly near the Atlantic coast, far from Bordeaux.
02:47We will be flying flights that simulate lunar and Martian gravity, is that true?
02:53Yes, it will not be a simulation, it will be a real apparent gravity that we have on
03:02the Moon or on Mars.
03:04So what makes a difference between a parabola that gives you the lunar gravity and the Martian
03:09gravity, or no gravity at all?
03:12It's just a matter of how much we push on the stick.
03:16If I give you a ball, and please throw it in such a way it will stay as long as possible
03:22in the air.
03:23So you will throw it up, and then from the time you release the ball, it will become
03:30to fall even, if still climbing at the beginning.
03:35And then we have the zero.
03:37We just push so that the aircraft will pull up first, and then when we reach a given altitude,
03:46we push on the stick so that the aircraft will do that, as if it was falling down in
03:52a vacuum.
03:53That is for the zero.
03:55And to keep lunar, it will be a little less sharp, and March even less.
04:03Unlike on your regular flight, there will be four pilots on board, three of them actively
04:08controlling the aircraft at the same time.
04:11One pilot will be in charge of the plane's pitch, the other will control its roll, the
04:17third will act on the throttle.
04:20After each set of parabolas, one pilot will take a break and will be replaced with a spare.
04:26The difficulty is to be very accurate, and that's our objective.
04:32So we share the three axes on the aircraft between the three pilots.
04:37So one is flying the pitch, and it is making the zero G, or the moon, or Mars gravity.
04:46And we use this kind of thing here, that we put here like that.
04:53I plug that to the radio.
04:57And then so, from now on, this pilot can only act on the pitch, and I cannot do that
05:05with that.
05:06You see this one, you can do both, pitch and roll.
05:10And with this one, I can only use pitch.
05:15And during that time, the other pilot will use a very technical equipment, these two
05:25things here.
05:29And it can act on the roll without pulling or pushing, so that the two pilots are flying
05:37the aircraft at the same time.
05:39And the third pilot is acting on the throttle.
05:43Let's go back in the cabin.
05:45Preparations for tomorrow's flight are in full swing here as well.
05:50Ten scientific teams from all over Europe are installing their equipment, making sure
05:56it's secured in a way that it won't pose any risk during our wild ride.
06:02Here I'm meeting Neil Melville, the European Space Agency's parabolic flight campaign coordinator,
06:08who will serve as my minder, making sure that I, the rookie flyer, won't cause too much
06:14chaos during the flight.
06:16We are doing some real science here, some fundamental science, but also some technology
06:22tests and demonstrations, because these flights are going to be very special.
06:25They're about lunar gravity and Martian gravity.
06:28So we're testing hardware and systems that we're really going to take to the moon to
06:33see if we can get them working the way we want in a much kind of cheaper and easier
06:37environment than flying all the way to the moon with it.
06:39So are there any other ways how we can simulate lunar gravity on Earth apart from being on
06:44a plane like this?
06:46It's not easy at all.
06:48There are a couple of drop tower type solutions that can do lunar gravity on a very, very
06:52small scale, but only for a couple of seconds and only for hardware.
06:57If you want to get yourself, to get people into lunar gravity, you have two options.
07:02You can either come on this aircraft or you can go to the moon.
07:05That's it.
07:06That was all really interesting.
07:08I think I've seen enough today and we will be back tomorrow in the morning.
07:16Good morning.
07:17I'm back at Bordeaux Airport.
07:19It's the 25th of April, 2023, 8 in the morning.
07:23And today is actually my 40th birthday.
07:26And I'm going to celebrate it in style.
07:29Right now I'm waiting to receive my anti-vomiting medication.
07:34Parabolic flights are sometimes called the vomit comet.
07:39And I will be honest with you.
07:40Do you remember that kid that used to throw up on every school trip?
07:45That was me.
07:46But never mind.
07:47This drug that I'm just going to receive cuts the risk of nausea to 1 in 10 people.
07:52So let's hope that it works for me as well.
07:55I also need to change into my flight suit.
07:58And now I'm ready to go.
08:01We will fly west of Bordeaux, above the Atlantic Ocean, climbing to the altitude of about 20,000
08:07feet.
08:08That's below the cruising altitude of commercial airliners, but well above the altitude frequented
08:14by lighter aircraft.
08:16Our pilots will then perform 4 sets of 7 to 8 parabolas, 2 lunar sets and 2 Martian sets.
08:23In between, we will have only 3 5 to 8 minute breaks.
08:27This is partial T. It's a little bit different to what we normally fly for those that have
08:33flown before with us.
08:34Please make sure you pay attention to the safety crew.
08:37Make sure that we all stay healthy and safe during the flight.
08:41Right.
08:42We're ready to go.
08:43Each parabola starts with a climb at a 50 degree angle to the altitude of nearly 30,000
08:49feet.
08:50You can hear the engines roar.
08:52The acceleration pins your body into the floor with double the force of Earth's gravity.
08:58It's a peculiar feeling.
09:01But it lasts only about 20 seconds.
09:09Then, injection.
09:11The engines stop.
09:13Silence.
09:14Everything slows down.
09:17Experienced scientists don't waste any time.
09:20But the rookies, like myself, can get a little carried away.
09:24Welcome to the moon.
09:26It feels magical.
09:27This is seriously cool.
09:29The 2G is not that cool.
09:31I need to lie down.
09:33The plane is descending.
09:35Our bodies get pinned down again.
09:38The experienced flyers stop in their tracks.
09:42Us rookies seek a more comfortable position on the floor.
09:46Then about a minute and a half of steady flight.
09:49Normal gravity.
09:51And then it starts again.
09:55I brought with me a lunar gravity indicator.
09:58It's a soft toy moon handmade specifically for this occasion by my colleague Daisy Dobrijevic.
10:04In lunar gravity, it spins and bounces like in slow motion.
10:08Gradually, I'm gaining more confidence.
10:11Lunar gravity feels good.
10:13But what will remain hard for me until the very end are the 2G phases before and after the reduced gravity.
10:20Wow, it's really quite interesting.
10:23The 2G during the pull-up feels a little funny.
10:27But yeah, wow, amazing.
10:31For now, I won't allow that to stop me enjoying this otherworldly experience.
10:37Now it feels as if I only weigh 10 kilos.
10:42She's right. 10 kilos.
10:44Definitely no more than that.
10:46Nice and easy.
10:48Don't play with me.
10:55It's time for our first break.
10:57We are receiving a very special visitor.
11:00One of our pilots has a break and has come to see the experiments.
11:04He might look a little familiar.
11:06These days, he is better known for flying to the International Space Station.
11:10One of our pilots today is actually the astronaut Tomas Pesce.
11:14I'm not kidding. Could you say hi to Space.com readers?
11:17Sure. Hi, everyone. Nice to fly with you today.
11:20So we're on this flight that is simulating lunar gravity.
11:23What role will these flights have in the future moon exploration?
11:27Well, it's here that we're testing everything, as you can tell around you.
11:31There's the technology, there's the engineering, the science.
11:34Not so much the astronauts, but they'll come at some point to train,
11:37also to prepare for those flights and get a taste of what it's going to be like to walk on the moon.
11:41That's the only place on Earth that you can test with people around their experiments
11:46and experience what it feels like to walk on the moon.
11:49So that's where it starts. And it's all going to happen up there.
11:53And while I'm trying to survive the uncomfortable 2G phase on the padded floor again,
11:58Tomas Pesce has a go piloting a device
12:01that might one day help astronauts transport equipment on the moon's surface.
12:07For me, things are soon going to get a little difficult.
12:11We're more than halfway through.
12:13We have finished all our lunar parabolas and also one set of the Martian parabolas.
12:18And we still have one Martian set to go.
12:22I find the 2G during the pull-up particularly challenging,
12:27but so far so good. I didn't have to use my back yet.
12:32So it's all good.
12:34Despite the strong medicine that I had received before the flight,
12:37I lived up to my childhood reputation and once again was the sickest kid on the trip.
12:43But in the meantime, all science teams completed their tasks without much difficulty.
12:48When the final parabola finally arrived, I was relieved.
12:521G felt good.
12:54It was a two-hour roller coaster and certainly the most intense thing I have done in my whole life.
13:00It would take me a while to process the experience.
13:16So now I know what it feels like to walk on the moon and Mars.
13:21I will certainly remember this experience for the rest of my life.
13:25But right now I'm quite happy to have my feet back on the ground of our very special planet Earth.