MERIGNAC, France (Reuters) — This aircraft has a very special mission.
It allows its passengers to experience zero gravity – or weightlessness – the next best thing to being in the International Space Station.
Passengers of the Zero-G plane, an Airbus A310, can experience zero gravity for over 20 seconds at a time when the plane leaps through the sky.
Company Novespace runs the program with French space agency CNES, allowing researchers to study the impact of microgravity on the human body, plants and matter in the hope of one day make living on planet Mars possible.
Passengers experiencing zero gravity feel their organs lifting up.
Their whole body is in freefall, but so are the objects around them.
The flight, which takes off from Merignac in southwestern France, is open to everyone but carries a price tag of 6,000 euros ($7,000).
The money goes to the company and part of it helps fund scientific research.
Much like an elevator, a spacecraft in orbit keeps falling — but over the horizon — following the earth’s curvature.
The zero gravity flights take off and ascend at a sharp 50 degree angle, reach a certain altitude and then free fall over an arc in the earth’s curvature.
These types of flights are increasingly used for research and to prepare equipment for the International Space Station.
Novespace, which is a unit of the CNES space agency and the 17-nation European Space Agency, claims to be leading the field in scientific deployment with the converted Airbus A310 jetliner.
The flying laboratory means scientists can experience zero-gravity conditions without having to go into space.
