WHAT IS MICROGRAVITY?

Microgravity is the term used to refer to an environment in free-fall. The term is a bit of a misnomer because it doesn’t refer to a low level of gravity, but rather the condition of an object moving freely in response to gravity. When you drop something, for the fraction of a second before it hits the floor that object is experiencing “microgravity” even though it is really moving under the full acceleration due to the Earth’s gravity. An object sitting on a table experiences the Earth’s gravity but also an equal and opposite force upward from the table. Microgravity environments are those where that restraining force from a table, chair, the floor, or atmospheric drag, for example, is absent. Microgravity can be achieved for experiments with the following platforms:

‍Drop Tower – Using this ground-based method, a payload is dropped from a specified height and subjected to free-fall conditions, producing microgravity for only very short durations.

‍Parabolic Airplane Flights – Using specially modified aircrafts that perform parabolic maneuvers, microgravity can be achieved for an approximate duration of 25-30 seconds per parabola.

‍Suborbital Rockets – These types of vehicles transport the payload into space and return to the same approximate location as it never makes it into orbit. Using this method provides a longer duration of microgravity.

‍Orbital Platforms – For example, payloads on the International Space Station can experience microgravity for days to years.