'Zero-G' science

ESA is taking advantage of Novespace’s latest 'Zero-G' aircraft to perform a number of experiments in microgravity. Twelve experiments - which include six by professional scientists and six by students as part of ESA’s Fly Your Thesis programme - took to the skies for three series of 31 parabolas off the coast of France. Conditions of microgravity, or weightlessness, are unique for research ranging from fundamental physics, testing Einstein’s weak equivalence principle, to psychology, neuroscience and the deployment of a balloon that may one day make measurements while falling through Mars’ atmosphere.