Student parabolic flight campaign 2004
ESA TV Exchanges
Every year, ESA offers talented young scientists a thrill of a lifetime: the unique chance to feel weightlessness. ESA TV accompanied these students going zero-g on the 2004 parabolic flight campaign for students. The plane is the Airbus-300 Zero-G dedicated to parabolic flights. Initially conceived to train astronauts, such flights are today used to develop and test science experiments and equipment usually destined to fly in space.
The flights are not just for astronauts, engineers and doctors. Since 1994, ESA has organised, as part of its Outreach and Education programme, annual parabolic flight campaigns for students. The seventh such campaign took place 29 June to 16 July 2004, flying off the Brittany coast. Experiments proposed by 31 teams had been selected, giving 120-odd yougsters a unique opportunity to float freely and perform their experiments ñ exactly as astronauts do in space. Many, if not all, of the investigations carried out by the stu