A new simulation system allows researchers to investigate the complexities of contact dynamics in weightlessness – such as this robotic arm reaching out to touch a free-floating platform. Simulating true microgravity is impossible but it can be mimicked on a frictionless basis in two dimensions.

Known as the Orbital Robotics Bench for Integrated Technology (ORBIT) facility, it relies on a trio of air-bearing platforms scooting across the flattest surface by far in ESA’s ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands – a 4.8 x 9 m epoxy floor smoothed to within 0.8 mm.

This space-age ‘air hockey table’ was first tested last month, The centrepiece of ESA’s new Orbital Robotics and Guidance Navigation and Control Laboratory, it will serve proposals for missions aimed at microgravity or low-gravity environments.