We visited the NASA Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex while on our Honeymoon in the US. Stay tuned for more of 's coverage of this unique experience.įollow Tereza Pultarova on Twitter. Novespace Zero G Airbus will likely serve as the prime training facility to prepare the European spacefarers for the adventure of their lifetime.
No European astronaut so far has been assigned to any of the upcoming NASA-led Artemis missions, but ESA hopes to get European feet on the moon surface within the next 10 years. In fact, during the recent flight campaign, the researchers already tested simple tasks, such as moving a box of tools, using a VR headset running a high-fidelity simulation of the moon created from satellite images. Stevenin and his team hope to expand their tests in the future by adding a virtual reality dimension that would allow the test subjects to not only operate the equipment in lunar gravity but also feel as if they were doing it on the moon thanks to a VR headset and gloves. World's largest swimming pool to house new astronaut training center GRAIL: NASA's mission to study the gravity of the moon Watch a drone drop a microgravity capsule in 1st-of-its-kind experiment (video) A fourth pilot is present in the cockpit to replace a colleague after each set of parabolas. This precision is achieved through a sophisticated piloting technique that requires three pilots actively involved during the parabolic phase of the flight, controlling separately the pitch, roll and thrust of the plane. Novespace, for 30 years Europe's only operator of parabolic flights, prides itself on its ability to recreate reduced gravity conditions with utmost precision that meets the needs of scientific research. "If you want to get yourself, to get people into lunar gravity, you have two options - you can either come on this aircraft or you can go to the moon. "There are a few drop tower solutions that can do lunar gravity on a very, very small scale but only for a couple of seconds and only for hardware," Melville said. Parabolic flights are the only option to generate lunar gravity on Earth in a way that humans can experience, Neil Melville, ESA parabolic flight coordinator, told. "So this is where it starts and it's all going to happen up there." "This is the only place on Earth that you can test with people, around their experiments and experience how it feels like to walk on the moon," Pesquet told (opens in new tab)during the flight. As you can see in the video, ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet, who served as one of the flight's pilots, came to have a try during his piloting break. During the flight, which involved 30 parabolas flown at steep angles that generate up to 30-second bouts of lunar or Martian gravity, Stevenin and his colleagues pushed or pulled LESA over the rocks. To prepare for such challenges, the team created a little obstacle course inside the plane by placing simulated moon rocks in the vehicle's path. "We know from that mission that it was sometimes difficult for the astronauts to maintain stability of the carrier, and that they sometimes struggled to get over complex terrain," said Stevenin. In fact, the crew of NASA's Apollo 14 mission used a similar, but simpler, two-wheel cart during their lunar surface exploration in 1971. Researchers know that wheeled vehicles might become unstable on rough lunar terrain, as the force of the moon's gravity is not strong enough to keep them glued to the surface. Novespace Airbus A310 is the only plane in the world capable of creating simulating lunar gravity with scientific precision.
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