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 on a very
00:39very small scale, but only for a couple of seconds and only for hardware. If you want to get yourself,
00:46to get people into lunar gravity, you have two options. You can either come on this aircraft,
00:50or you can go to the Moon. That's it. Parabolic flights, best known for producing weightlessness,
00:56follow a wild trajectory of fast steep climbs and short carefully managed free falls. During those
01:03free falls, objects inside the plane experience either brief spells with no gravity at all, or,
01:10if 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
01:25need.
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 upon
01:54Bordeaux'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 Moon
02:06exploration 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 requests of all the
02:26experimentators and participants. Of course, we are most interested in the lunar environment and lunar
02:33partial gravity because this is what will help us to prepare for the Moon exploration.
02:39Scientists 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,
03:19bed rest studies, we know they can simulate microgravity, but no one really knows what is the right
03:23condition 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
03:43during the flight lasts just under half a minute and is preceded and followed by 20 seconds of
03:49hypergravity when the plane speeds up and steeply rises and then when it recovers from the freefall
03:56state. During one flight, the plane performs 30 such maneuvers, with only brief periods of steady flight
04:03in between. By 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.
04:16In this experiment, scientists are filming the behavior of human immune cells inside special
04:23containers. The researchers know that in weightlessness, immune cells struggle to reach the infection site,
04:30which 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,
04:41that when there is really no gravity at all, we have a centralization of the cell flow in the
04:47middle of this flow chamber. 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.
05:05On board the flight is also a 3D printer that uses a type of plastic mixed with simulated lunar dust
05:12to
05:13print simple tools. This is the first time researchers are testing its performance in lunar gravity.
05:19But the most interesting piece of equipment on board is this vehicle, developed by a team of researchers
05:26from the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany. It's called LISA for Lunar Equipment Support Assembly.
05:34And it's essentially a lunar wheelbarrow that may one day help astronauts on the Moon transport equipment
05:40or injured crew members.
05:42Is it difficult to operate something like this on the Moon?
05:45It's not really difficult to operate it because it's much lighter, because of the
05:50lower 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
06:01of LISA during the parabolic flights. Here, European astronaut Thomas Pesquet has a go operating LISA in
06:08Martian gravity.
06:09What we want to test is how an operator, an astronaut, let's say, in lunar gravity will
06:19work 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
06:45configuration.
06:45Astronauts train in parabolic flights to prepare for weightlessness, which they experience on the
06:52International 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,
07:11while 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 that they
07:24see in the virtual reality simulation, but which is also physically present in front of them. In the future,
07:31the setup may become more complex and include, for example, the LISA wheelbarrow and a physical mock-up of a
07:38lunar lander.
07:39When you wear this headset, the resolution is so high that it's, wow, I'm on the Moon,
07:45it's very impressive. Now if in addition, what you try to grasp is you have the virtual, the partial
07:53gravity that is added to the virtual environment. And when you want to move around, you move like on the
07:58Moon, you are really embedded into it. And we are convinced that there is a high potential for
08:04astronaut training in the future, combining these two technologies.
08:09The Artemis program expects to land humans on the Moon in 2025. By the end of this decade,
08:16NASA plans to build a permanent base camp near the lunar south pole that will host crews of four
08:23astronauts for up to one month. For comparison, the longest of the Apollo-era landings 50 years ago
08:30lasted barely three days.
08:43NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
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