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European Space Agency

Press Release

34th ESA Parabolic Flight Campaign Day One: bubbles and light bulbs
in microgravity

2 April 2003
 
Along with the big 'Zero-G' sign painted on the fuselage of the A300
Airbus, the other big clue this was no ordinary flight into
Bordeaux-Mérignac Airport yesterday was the blue flight suits worn by
all 40 disembarking passengers.
 
A few of these passengers looked sickly, and all of them looked
tired. But then for the last three hours they'd been working very
hard - in conditions like nothing on Earth.

The first flight of the three-day 34th ESA Parabolic Flight Campaign
touched down at 12.55 CEST. Twelve teams from across Europe had
prepared for months for the opportunity to carry out experiments in
weightless conditions.
 
The Novespace-operated Airbus flew a series of 31 parabolic arcs in a
200km-long airspace area set-aside for it above France's Atlantic
coast. During these arcs the four pilots manoeuvre the aircraft so as
to cancel out thrust and atmospheric drag and eliminate wing
buoyancy. For 20 seconds at a time the Airbus is subject only to the
force of gravity - and everything inside it becomes weightless as a
result.

"I'd say a parabolic flight is equivalent to half the experience of a
space flight," pilot Philippe Perrin had told the experimenters. "You
feel the microgravity, just without the view of the Earth that goes
with it." Philippe flew on a Shuttle mission last year as a French
CNES astronaut and has since joined the European Astronaut Corps.

Boarding the aircraft the passengers sat in standard chairs for
take-off, but before the parabolas were due to begin they moved to
the padded and windowless central section of the plane and attended
to their many and varied experiments bolted to the floor. These
experiments are focused on either the physical or life sciences.

One physical sciences team from Germany's Darmstadt University of
Technology is using a heated plate to warm a container of liquid and
form a vapour bubble - like the ones you get boiling a kettle. But
unlike those, this bubble won't be detached upward from the heated
surface by gravity as it grows above a certain size.

The aim is to make a large enough bubble fixed to the surface so
experimenters can observe just how such bubbles transfer heat to
liquids - filling a gap in existing theory with implications for
future boiler and power station designs. 

Dutch researchers from the Eindhoven University of Technology are
working with Philips on ways to build better light bulbs. High-
Intensity Discharge (HID) lamps are already prized in environments
such as sports fields and parking lots because of their high - up to
40 per cent - energy efficiency.
 
But the bulbs can sometimes go wrong: the chemicals inside them can
begin to de-mix or the light arc starts to wobble in a striking helix
pattern, both for unknown reasons. The team is flying a set of HID
bulbs while using spectrometry to see how the bulbs react to
differing gravity values, providing insight into why they fail and
how to improve them in future.

Other physical sciences experiments are focused on subjects including
foam and fire, both of which behave in very different ways in
microgravity. The life sciences experiments have different test
subjects - human beings - and will be featured in our next report on
the 34th ESA Parabolic Flight Campaign. 

In the post-flight debriefing both sets of teams expressed general
satisfaction in how the flight had gone, although Bordeaux's blue
skies were less tranquil than they looked and mid-air turbulence
struck at various points, dislodging the German team's bubble before
it could really get growing.
 
A few teams ran into other problems. One student team from the
University of Regensburg had their electric engine - used to
vigorously shake multi-sized grains to see how they settle in
weightlessness - break down shortly into the flight. Luckily they
have a spare to fly tomorrow. And nausea took its toll on a few human
test subjects. 

The scientific teams had a busy night repairing and cleaning-up their
experiments. Cleanliness is vital in a microgravity environment.
During the briefing the crew displayed loose debris scattered
throughout the aircraft during the parabolic flight - it included
metal shavings and loose nuts, potentially harmful to human beings
and aircraft systems alike. 

Wednesday's flight is due off at 10.00 CEST, with the Airbus doors
sealed promptly a half-hour earlier. All experimenters know not to be
late - they wouldn't miss their next dose of microgravity for the
world.

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