KIRUNA, SWEDEN (Spaceport Sweden PR) — Have you ever dreamt of flying, defying the laws of gravity and float free in the air like an astronaut? Since space exploration began, only a few hundred have had the privilege to experience the ultimate space experience and the magical feeling to float in total weightlessness.
That is about to change. For the fist time ever, weightless flights will be offered to the general public in Europe. Spaceport Sweden has been selected as a key partner and reseller for the air Zero G flights in the Netherlands and Nordic countries (excluding Iceland).
Zero-gravity experience lifts off at Le Bourget AFP
Once available only to astronauts and scientists, the weightless experience is about to become a bit more accessible, provided you’ve got the cash.
Novespace managing director and ex-astronaut Jean-Francois Clervoy announced Tuesday that he plans to offer commercial flights, including one before the end of this year.
Final approval from France’s civil aviation authority is pending, and the price tag — provisionally set at 4,000 euros (5,700 dollars) — has yet to be finalized.
But Clervoy envisions half-a-dozen sorties a year with 40 passengers each starting in 2012. It would be only the third such commercial service in the world, along with one in the United States and one in Russia.
The ARID team in microgravity. (Credits: ESA photo/A. Le Floc'h)
ESA PR – The second series of flights in ESA’s ‘Fly Your Thesis!’ programme concluded recently. After many months of preparation, the 10-day campaign culminated with four student experiments making three parabolic flights aboard the Airbus A300 Zero-G aircraft.
Four student teams, from the UK, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, were selected for this rare opportunity to conduct their own experiments during ESA’s 54th Parabolic Flight Campaign.
NASA PR — WASHINGTON – NASA has selected 16 payloads for flights on the commercial Zero-G parabolic aircraft and two suborbital reusable launch vehicles as part of the agency’s Flight Opportunities Program. The flights provide opportunities for space technologies to be demonstrated and validated in relevant environments. In addition, these flights foster the development of the nation’s commercial reusable suborbital transportation industry.
Participants experience microgravity aboard a Zero-G Corporation parabolic flight. (PRNewsFoto/Zero Gravity Corporation, Al Powers)
Hey, you going to be in Chicago on March 26? Yes.
Got $4,200 to burn? Uh-huh.
Then Go ZERO-G! All right!
Seats on the Chicago flight on March 26 are only $4,000 plus a $200 excise tax. That’s about a 20 percent discount on a $5,197.50 full-priced ticket with tax.
Sign up here. Do it quickly. The 72-hour sale ends on Sunday, March 20.
NGF PR — LOS ANGELES, March 10, 2011 — The Northrop Grumman Foundation announced today that the Foundation is accepting teacher applications for the 2011 Weightless Flights of Discovery program, a unique professional development initiative that places teachers on microgravity flights to test Newton’s Laws of Motion and energize students during their formative middle school years. The announcement was made during the National Science Teachers Association’s (NSTA) National Conference on Science Education, held in San Francisco this week.
A4H PR – Orlando, Florida – Astronauts4Hire has completed its inaugural paid contract to test the world’s first beer designed for consumption in space. The experiment, which marks humanity’s first formal study on alcohol absorption in microgravity, took place aboard a parabolic trajectory microgravity flight out of Cape Canaveral, Florida operated by Zero Gravity Corporation (ZERO-G). Yesterday’s flight was the first in a series of microgravity flights qualifying the beer recipe for consumption in space, funded in part by sales of the beverage on Earth.
NASA has announced opportunities to test emerging technologies during flights on an airplane that simulates the weightless conditions of space. The technologies should have potential use in future NASA projects, support future exploration systems, or improve air and space vehicle capabilities.
NASA’s Facilitated Access to the Space Environment for Technology, or FAST, program helps emerging technologies mature through testing in a reduced gravity environment. In order to prepare technologies for space applications it is important to demonstrate that they work in a zero-gravity environment.
So in love they could float away: Brooklyn couple to wed in zero gravity New York Daily News
Self-confessed sci-fi addicts Noah Fulmore, 31, and Erin Finnegan, 30, will travel to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., to exchange their vows while literally walking on air.
Jack Kennedy reports that Virginia educators plan to purchase seats aboard Zero G’s parabolic aircraft for teachers and students in order to help promote STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education throughout the state.
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