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Leicester Students to Experience weightlessness in gravity-defying experiment

Posted on 03/03/2010
University of Leicester

Leicester Students to Experience weightlessness in gravity-defying experiment

Four students from the University of Leicester are the only ones in Britain, and among a small number from across Europe, to be selected for a gravity-defying experiment in the framework of the ESA Education Office “Fly your Thesis!” programme (http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Fly_Your_Thesis/index.html).

The students from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University have won a place in an European Space Agency’s (ESA) parabolic flight campaign in 2011.

They will experience weightless conditions aboard the Novespace Airbus A300 Zero-G plane, whilst performing an experiment of their own design. The team will travel to Bordeaux and spend a week testing and installing an experiment onboard the aircraft, before taking off for the parabolic flights. At cruising altitude the plane will pull up and the students and accompanying ESA and Novespace staff will experience close to 2g, twice their weight on Earth.

The aircraft will then enter into a parabolic flight path and the occupants will experience 0g for about twenty seconds, before pulling out of the dive and experiencing 2g again. The experience is attributed to the fact that free falling objects, which follow parabolic trajectories, are weightless.

In total, four teams have been selected to conduct their microgravity experiments during the parabolic flights aboard the aircraft. The teams, made up of students from five ESA Member States, were chosen from the 12 teams pre-selected in September 2009.

The selected teams are:

GRAPPA Four students from the University of Leicester, UK will investigate a ‘condensation mechanism for non-ideal kinetic gases of varying temperature’, and its relevance to the formation of planets and ‘rubble pile’ asteroids in the early Solar System.

QNEM & nanos on board! Four students from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium and the University Federico II, in Naples, Italy will investigate the thermal diffusivity and conductivity of nanofluids – suspensions in conventional liquids of particles ranging in size from a few nanometres to 200 nanometres. This could lead to significant improvements in heat transfer devices.

Supermassive B Four students from Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, and Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France will study the properties of the dust resulting from asteroid collisions in order to improve exoplanet detection.

ARID Two students from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands will investigate the interactions between soil particles to determine if the water repellence of top soils is affected by reorienting the water repellent coating on the surface of these particles. The results could improve understanding of the effects of forest fires and desertification on the repellence of water by soil.

The Leicester team comprises three postgraduates and one undergraduate and is supervised by Graham Wynn, Senior Lecturer in Theoretical Astrophysics, and Dr Daniel Brandt of the Space Research Centre who was a previous Leicester participant of a parabolic flight.

Dr Wynn said that the Leicester experiment was about planet formation in a box!: “Planets like the Earth form in dust clouds around young stars. We aim to use the weightlessness experienced during the parabolic flight to recreate the conditions in these dust clouds inside a 10cm box. The box will be filled with sand, much like the silicate grains in the dust clouds, and shaken vigorously. We will look at how the sand grains cluster into larger structures which, under the right conditions, may be the seeds of planet formation.”

The Leicester participants are:

Laura Evans, undergraduate, of Shadwell, near Leeds. She said: “This opportunity is so exciting because it allows us to make a real scientific contribution while also experience the amazing zero-g conditions and working in a professional research environment.”

Charly Feldman, postgraduate, of Harrow in North West London. She said: "It's brilliant that we have managed to get a very competitive spot on the flight and I'm really looking forward to being weightless and floating around the plane!"

David Gray, postgraduate, of Purley/Croydon in Surrey said: "The ESA parabolic flights are an excellent way for us to do some really unique science and have a great experience too. I can't wait. It’s not everyday that you get to look at how solar systems form while travelling on a 500mph rollercoaster!"

Fergus Wilson, postgraduate, of Wellingborough in Northamptonshire, added: "In all honesty, it is an amazing opportunity we have been given to test real science in order to further our understanding of the Universe. Our experiment is aimed to aid in the explanation of the formation of Earth and other planets also."

Pictured, L-r: Fergus Wilson, David Gray, Laura Evans and Charly Feldman.