Experience weightlessness on a parabolic flight of ESA

In the same flight crew involved two Mars 500 mission. These flights will be offered to the public later this year for 5,000 euro’s, 13 experiments are conduct on the effects of zero gravity.

The Zero-G Airbus raises the nose to start a parabola and immediately entered hypergravity. All weigh twice normal and you feel like a giant vacuum cleaner sucking was down every muscle in your body from the toes to the neck, cheeks and even the eyelids.

To avoid dizziness, intense pressure that is to hold it without moving your head for about 20 seconds, until the pilot minimizes engine power and the plane goes into free fall. From that moment, as you hear the speakers' injection! “Entered in zero gravity and start to literally levitate’’.

As if you had suddenly become a soap bubble, float to the ceiling of the plane, bounce against a wall, give multiple somersaults in the air, and bounce on the ground again and again to rise up in a heady delirium of impossible stunts.

That in itself is very risky to lose control of your body, because each period zero gravity takes only 20 seconds, until the plane suddenly drops and re-enters a new phase of hypergravity. So every time the pilot exclaimed “pull out! " ("We went out!"), It is essential to keep their feet firmly placed into the ground, to 'land' softly. Otherwise, you can easily print head on the ground during the brief moment when it happens to float freely to plummet.

Diego Urbina and Romain Charles, floating in zero gravity ESA

Welcome to the amazing world of parabolic flights organized by the European Space Agency (ESA) to train its astronauts and conduct scientific experiments on the effects of zero gravity. Last week, the world was the only Spanish invited to participate in one of these amazing flights.

The opportunity was unique, since in the same plane traveling Diego Urbina and Romain Charles, two of the heroic crew of the mission Mars 500, that for 17 months (June 2010 to November 2011) were enclosed in a capsule in Moscow and lived in complete isolation to simulate a trip to the Red Planet. Having passed this grueling test of physical endurance and psychological, the objective of this flight was to analyze the reactions of your body to zero gravity.

The parabolic flights toward simulate during brief periods of life in space. The effect is achieved by the descent of an aircraft in free fall, a spectacular maneuver during a parabolic shape. Novespace , the French company that manages the flights from Merignac Airport in Bordeaux, has more than two decades offering this service space agencies with Airbus Zero-G, a commercial airliner converted to simulate cosmic life.

But his intention is to go much further. From the end of this year by winning permission from the European authorities, Novespace plans to offer these flights to the public. The ticket price has not yet been set, but considering what charges a U.S. company that already offers this experience in Florida, is estimated to be around 5,000 euro’s.