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.
08:33 [Music]
