It feels like I’m hallucinating: as I lie on the floor, the ceiling suddenly descends towards me and the walls begin to tilt at an impossible angle. This is my first experience of zero gravity on a European Space Agency (Esa) parabolic flight. In theory I know what’s going on, but my brain just can’t grasp that it’s actually me floating, that I’m suspended in the air.
I accompany Britain’s first female Esa astronaut, Rosemary Coogan, on the flight as part of her zero-gravity training for a potential six-month deployment to the International Space Station. During the three-hour flight, sometimes referred to as the vomit comet, the plane will track 31 parabolas – rising arcs in the sky.
As we waited for takeoff, any nerves I felt were replaced by excitement, my confidence boosted by the spacesuit I was issued and a generous injection of anti-nausea medication.
The plane will not literally leave the Earth’s gravitational sphere. Instead, it follows a roller coaster trajectory designed to simulate zero gravity. Each parabola begins with a steep climb, with the aircraft reaching an angle of 50 degrees and nearing its maximum speed. At this point, the engines are all but cut off and the plane and everyone inside become slingshots in a free-fall trajectory. Gravity still exists in the outside world, but not within the plane’s frame of reference. After 22 seconds, the engines rev up again, the plane nosedives and anyone in the air will be thrown unceremoniously back to the floor.
During the first half of the flight, I’m assigned the “free-floating area,” a net cage with a padded floor at the back of the plane, to try out some basic astronaut mobility skills, while Coogan learns to operate an experimental glove box. to use.
During the “pull-up” phase we experience hyper-gravity. My body is pressed into the floor, hands feel like lead and then the pilot counts down over the intercom: “Three, two, one. Injection”. The engines cut, a silence descends, and weightlessness kicks in.
The first instinct is to “swim”, but I find myself ridiculously airborne. Bouncing off the walls like a balloon seems to be more effective and soon I’m happily doing somersaults.
“Let go of the idea of up and down,” says Neil Melville, Esa’s parabolic flight coordinator, as we walk up the wall, across the ceiling and shake hands while hanging upside down.
Temporarily having the ability to fly is obviously a big draw of the whole experience. But the inner sensation of weightlessness is, unexpectedly, just as extraordinary. The internal organs light up, blood flows effortlessly to the brain, a sense of peaceful disembodiedness takes over.
“You talk to astronauts about these things, and especially if they’ve been looking out a window for a long time, they forget they have a body,” says Melville.
The plane, a modified Airbus, was once Angela Merkel’s government plane: it’s old enough to have manual controls (a modern commercial plane will automatically jam a pilot attempting a 50-degree climb), but with few enough flight hours to be in robust condition condition. The intensity of forces during the parabola, I am told, is such that its wings visibly bend if you feel inclined to look at them out the window.
Beyond the net cage, the plane’s body has been hollowed out and outfitted with a dozen experiments, including a squid-like gripper to capture space debris, someone playing Pac-Man while holding a EEG helmet and breathing mask, and a scientist being pulled back and forth along a shuttle while blindfolded. All are attached to a rail or the floor.
One scientist tells me the brain can work better in zero gravity because blood doesn’t have to work against gravity to deliver oxygen. And every parabola does feel like I’m entering a state of hyper-reality.
On landing, as I get off the plane, I consciously feel the earth’s pull for the first time. In total, I spent 11 minutes in weightlessness. It’s a brief but breathtaking glimpse into life beyond the confines of our home planet.
