Airbus Matthijs van der Kooij with RPM

Airbus business development manager Matthijs van der Kooij operated the Random Positioning Machine (RPM) at Leiden Bio Science Park. RPM was developed by the Dutch office of Airbus for ESA to do experiment in zero or reduced gravity here on Earth without going into space. The RPM rotates any enclosed experiment ‘randomly’ to minimise the influence of Earth’s gravity, thereby simulating what would be experienced in space. The original models could successfully simulate zero gravity, typically referred to as microgravity. The newer RPM 2.0 can additionally simulate partial gravity, which is between 0g and 1g.