00:00European scientists are turning an aircraft into a laboratory that simulates lunar gravity,
00:05and Space.com has taken a ride aboard this plane with them.
00:09There is only one way to experience the feeling of being on the Moon while still on Earth,
00:14or rather a few thousand feet above its surface, in a parabolic flight.
00:20Only parabolic flight can reproduce the Moon and Mars' gravity. There are no other facilities.
00:26Other facilities only simulate, but not recreate the real one. On board our plane this is a real
00:34gravity field. There are a couple of like drop tower type solutions that can do lunar gravity
00:39on a very very small scale, but only for a couple of seconds and only for hardware. If you want to
00:45get yourself, to get people into lunar gravity, you have two options. You can either come on this
00:50aircraft or you can go to the Moon. That's it. Parabolic flights, best known for producing weight
00:56lessness, follow a wild trajectory of fast steep climbs and short carefully managed free falls.
01:02During those free falls, objects inside the plane experience either brief spells with no gravity at
01:08all, or if the pilot flies the parabola just a little differently, reduce gravity.
01:14We'll fly this aircraft like the aircraft is falling down, but not too much to keep just the gravity we need.
01:26I mean 0.16 g for Moon gravity or 0.38 g for March.
01:34The French company Novespas, based in the famous winemaking city of Bordeaux, is Europe's only operator
01:40of parabolic flights and prides itself on their ability to generate lunar or Martian gravity conditions
01:47with scientific precision. In the last week of April, scientists from all over Europe descended
01:54upon Bordeaux's airport and turned the Novespas plane into a lunar gravity research lab. Until recently,
02:01there's been more demand for flights that produce weightlessness. But with the renewed interest in
02:06Moon exploration spearheaded by the NASA-led Artemis program, the need for artificial Moon-like conditions
02:12is on the rise. This is the first time that the European Space Agency is doing a full parabolic
02:19flight campaign in partial gravity. So we do lunar and Martian because of the request of all the
02:27the experimentators and participants. Of course, we are most interested in the lunar environment and
02:32lunar partial gravity because this is what will help us to prepare for the Moon exploration.
02:38Scientists know quite well what no gravity does to human beings and technology thanks to years of
02:45research on the International Space Station. But they know very little about the effects of the Moon's
02:51gravity, which is one sixth that of Earth, or Martian gravity, which is a little stronger than one third
02:58of Earth's gravity. We know only very little about the effect of the Moon gravity or life on the Moon
03:06on the human being since we were on the Moon for only really limited period of time. And there's an
03:12additional factor about it because we cannot simulate Moon gravity on Earth so easily. For instance,
03:18better as studies, we know they can simulate microgravity, but no one really knows what is the right
03:24condition to simulate lunar gravity and neither Mars. So we are really in a kind of still black box
03:31where we don't know exactly what the human being will be faced to and how he will cope to these
03:36conditions on the Moon when he stays more than a few days, I would say. Each reduced gravity spell during
03:43the flight lasts just under half a minute and is preceded and followed by 20 seconds of hypergravity
03:50when the plane speeds up and steeply rises and then when it recovers from the freefall state.
03:57During one flight the plane performs 30 such maneuvers with only brief periods of steady flight in between.
04:04By carefully analyzing what happens with the experiments during these short periods of reduced
04:10gravity scientists can gain a better understanding of what might await future Moon explorers.
04:17In this experiment scientists are filming the behavior of human immune cells inside special containers.
04:25The researchers know that in weightlessness immune cells struggle to reach the infection site,
04:31which makes astronauts more prone to illness. Now they want to know whether the same effect
04:36occurs in lunar and Martian gravity. We have seen at least in this experimental setting that when
04:42there is really no gravity at all we have a centralization of the cell flow in the middle of
04:47this flow chamber so it was even so they were faster and centralized so to get in contact with a vessel
04:55wall might be already because of this much harder. Yes and now we are just investigating the same issue
05:03in lunar and Martian gravity. On board the flight is also a 3D printer that uses a type of plastic
05:10mixed with simulated lunar dust to print simple tools. This is the first time researchers are
05:17testing its performance in lunar gravity. But the most interesting piece of equipment on board is this
05:24vehicle developed by a team of researchers from the European Astronaut Center in Cologne, Germany.
05:29It's called LISA for Lunar Equipment Support Assembly and it's essentially a lunar wheelbarrow
05:36that may one day help astronauts on the Moon transport equipment or injured crew members.
05:42Is it difficult to operate something like this on the Moon? It's not really difficult to operate it
05:47because it's much lighter because of the lower gravity but it's more difficult when you have uneven terrain.
05:55Stefanin and his team created a little obstacle course inside the plane to test three versions of LISA
06:01during the parabolic flights. Here European astronaut Thomas Pesquet has a go operating LISA in Martian gravity.
06:09What we want to test is how an operator, an astronaut, let's say in lunar gravity, will
06:18work what is a locomotion that will be applied to pull and push this kind of equipment and how the
06:26equipment will react over an uneven terrain and how you have to control it. This will give us some
06:33feedback to improve the next prototype, next generation and to define is it better with four wheels,
06:39is it better with three wheels, is it better to have one handle, two handles, what would be the best configuration.
06:45Astronauts train in parabolic flights to prepare for weightlessness, which they experience on the
06:51International Space Station. But the Novespas plane, which is the largest in the world capable of flying
06:58parabolic flights, could in the future be turned into a sophisticated training ground to prepare astronauts
07:04heading to the Moon. In this experiment, Stefanin and his colleagues perform simple tasks in lunar gravity
07:12while wearing a virtual reality headset running a simulation of a region near the lunar south pole
07:17where future Artemis missions will land. In this case, the test subjects move a box of tools
07:23that they see in the virtual reality simulation, but which is also physically present in front of them.
07:30In the future, the setup may become more complex and include, for example, the LISA wheelbarrow
07:36and a physical mock-up of a lunar lander. When you wear this headset, the resolution is so high that it's
07:44wow, I'm on the Moon, it's really impressive. Now if in addition, what you try to grasp is you have the
07:51virtual, the partial gravity that is added to the virtual environment and when you want to move around,
07:56you move like on the Moon, you are really embedded into it. And we are convinced that there is a high
08:03potential for astronaut training in the future combining these two technologies.
08:10The Artemis program expects to land humans on the Moon in 2025. By the end of this decade, NASA plans
08:17to build a permanent base camp near the lunar south pole that will host crews of four astronauts for up to
08:24one month. For comparison, the longest of the Apollo-era landings 50 years ago lasted barely three days.
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