European scientists are turning an aircraft into a laboratory that simulates lunar gravity to prepare astronauts and technology for future moon landings as part of the NASA-led Artemis missions.
The moon is a strange little world. Only about 1.2% the mass of Earth, our planet's companion exerts a much weaker gravitational force on objects on its surface than the parent planet. As a result, an astronaut on the moon's surface feels as if he or she only weighs one sixth of their earthly weight. The same goes for all equipment the astronauts would use. It may sound like no big deal but this feeble gravitational pull creates all sorts of unforeseen problems that are difficult to prepare for in research labs on Earth. There is, however, one way to experience lunar gravity while still in the confines of Earth and explore these challenges before going to the moon: in a parabolic flight.
Credit: Space.com | footage courtesy: European Space Agency/Novespace/NASA
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The moon is a strange little world. Only about 1.2% the mass of Earth, our planet's companion exerts a much weaker gravitational force on objects on its surface than the parent planet. As a result, an astronaut on the moon's surface feels as if he or she only weighs one sixth of their earthly weight. The same goes for all equipment the astronauts would use. It may sound like no big deal but this feeble gravitational pull creates all sorts of unforeseen problems that are difficult to prepare for in research labs on Earth. There is, however, one way to experience lunar gravity while still in the confines of Earth and explore these challenges before going to the moon: in a parabolic flight.
Credit: Space.com | footage courtesy: European Space Agency/Novespace/NASA
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00:00 European scientists are turning an aircraft into a laboratory that simulates lunar gravity,
00:05 and Space.com has taken a ride aboard this plane with them.
00:08 There is only one way to experience the feeling of being on the Moon while still on Earth,
00:14 or rather a few thousand feet above its surface, in a parabolic flight.
00:19 Only parabolic flight can reproduce the Moon and Mars gravity. There is no other
00:26 facilities. Other facilities only simulate, but not recreate the real one.
00:31 On board our plane, this is a real gravity field.
00:35 There are a couple of drop tower type solutions that can do lunar gravity on a very, very small
00:40 scale, but only for a couple of seconds and only for hardware. If you want to get yourself,
00:46 to get people into lunar gravity, you have two options. You can either come on this aircraft,
00:50 or you can go to the Moon. That's it.
00:53 Parabolic flights, best known for producing weightlessness,
00:57 follow a wild trajectory of fast, steep climbs and short, carefully managed free falls.
01:02 During those free falls, objects inside the plane experience either brief spells with no gravity at
01:08 all, or, if the pilot flies the parabola just a little differently, reduced gravity.
01:15 We'll fly this aircraft like the aircraft is falling down, but not too much,
01:23 to keep just the gravity we need. I mean 0.16 g for Moon gravity or 0.38 g for Mars.
01:33 The French company Novespas, based in the famous winemaking city of Bordeaux,
01:39 is Europe's only operator of parabolic flights, and prides itself on their ability
01:44 to generate lunar or Martian gravity conditions with scientific precision.
01:48 In the last week of April, scientists from all over Europe descended upon Bordeaux's airport
01:56 and turned the Novespas plane into a lunar gravity research lab. Until recently,
02:01 there's been more demand for flights that produce weightlessness.
02:04 But with the renewed interest in Moon exploration, spearheaded by the
02:08 NASA-led Artemis programme, the need for artificial Moon-like conditions is on the rise.
02:15 This is the first time that the European Space Agency is doing a full parabolic flight campaign
02:20 in partial gravity. So we do lunar and Martian, because of the requests of all the
02:26 experimenters and participants. Of course, we are most interested in the lunar environment and lunar
02:33 partial gravity, because this is what will help us to prepare for the Moon exploration.
02:38 Scientists know quite well what no gravity does to human beings and technology,
02:44 thanks to years of research on the International Space Station.
02:47 But they know very little about the effects of the Moon's gravity, which is one-sixth that of Earth,
02:54 or Martian gravity, which is a little stronger than one-third of Earth's gravity.
03:00 We know only very little about the effect of the Moon's gravity or life on the Moon on the
03:06 human being, since we were on the Moon for only a limited period of time. And there's an additional
03:12 factor about it, because we cannot simulate Moon gravity on Earth so easily. For instance,
03:18 bedrest studies, we know they can simulate microgravity, but no one really knows what
03:23 is the right condition to simulate lunar gravity, and neither Mars. So we are really in a kind of
03:29 still black box, where we don't know exactly what the human being will be faced to and how he will
03:36 cope to these conditions on the Moon when he stays more than a few days, I would say.
03:41 Each reduced gravity spell during the flight lasts just under half a minute, and is preceded and
03:47 followed by 20 seconds of hypergravity when the plane speeds up and steeply rises, and then when
03:54 it recovers from the freefall state. During one flight, the plane performs 30 such manoeuvres,
04:01 with only brief periods of steady flight in between. By carefully analysing what happens
04:06 with the experiments during these short periods of reduced gravity, scientists can gain a better
04:13 understanding of what might await future Moon explorers. In this experiment, scientists are
04:19 filming the behaviour of human immune cells inside special containers. The researchers know that in
04:26 weightlessness, immune cells struggle to reach the infection site, which makes astronauts more
04:32 prone to illness. Now they want to know whether the same effect occurs in lunar and Martian gravity.
04:39 We have seen, at least in this experimental setting, that when there is really no gravity at
04:43 all, we have a centralisation of the cell flow in the middle of this flow chamber, so it was
04:49 even faster and centralised. So to get in contact with a vessel wall might be, already because of
04:58 this, much harder. Yes, and now we are just investigating the same issue in lunar and Martian
05:04 gravity. On board the flight is also a 3D printer that uses a type of plastic mixed with simulated
05:11 lunar dust to print simple tools. This is the first time researchers are testing its performance in
05:18 lunar gravity. But the most interesting piece of equipment on board is this vehicle, developed by
05:25 a team of researchers from the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany. It's called LISA,
05:31 for Lunar Equipment Support Assembly, and it's essentially a lunar wheelbarrow that may one day
05:37 help astronauts on the Moon transport equipment or injured crew members. Is it difficult to operate
05:43 something like this on the Moon? It's not really difficult to operate it because it's much lighter,
05:48 because of the lower gravity, but it's more difficult when you have uneven terrain.
05:55 Stevenin and his team created a little obstacle course inside the plane to test three versions
06:01 of LISA during the parabolic flights. Here, European astronaut Thomas Pesquet has a go
06:07 operating LISA in Martian gravity. What we want to test is how an operator, an astronaut, let's say,
06:15 in lunar gravity will work, what is the locomotion that will be applied to pull and push this kind of
06:24 equipment, and how the equipment will react over uneven terrain, and how you have to control it.
06:31 This will give us some feedback to improve the next prototype, next generation, and to define
06:38 is it better with four wheels, is it better with three wheels, is it better to have one handle,
06:42 two handles, what would be the best configuration. Astronauts train in parabolic flights to prepare
06:49 for weightlessness, which they experience on the International Space Station.
06:53 But the Novespas plane, which is the largest in the world capable of flying parabolic flights,
06:59 could in the future be turned into a sophisticated training ground to prepare astronauts heading to
07:05 the Moon. In this experiment, Stevenin and his colleagues perform simple tasks in lunar gravity
07:12 while wearing a virtual reality headset running a simulation of a region near the lunar south pole
07:17 where future Artemis missions will land. In this case, the test subjects move a box of tools
07:23 that they see in the virtual reality simulation, but which is also physically present in front of
07:29 them. In the future, the setup may become more complex and include, for example, the LISA
07:35 wheelbarrow and a physical mock-up of a lunar lander. When you wear this headset, the resolution
07:43 is so high that it's, wow, I'm on the Moon, it's really impressive. Now, if in addition, what you
07:48 try to grasp is you have the virtual, the partial gravity that is added to the virtual environment,
07:55 and when you want to move around, you move like on the Moon, you are really embedded into it. And we
08:01 are convinced that there is a high potential for astronaut training in the future,
08:06 combining these two technologies. The Artemis programme expects to land humans on the Moon in
08:13 2025. By the end of this decade, NASA plans to build a permanent base camp near the lunar south
08:20 pole that will host crews of four astronauts for up to one month. For comparison, the longest
08:28 of the Apollo-era landings 50 years ago lasted barely three days.
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