Fly Your Thesis! 2012 finishes successfully

“This year’s “Fly Your Thesis!” campaign ended on 25 October. For three days, a specially equipped aircraft flew 31 manoeuvres – or parabolas – that generate microgravity conditions, giving students invaluable experience in how to design, construct and run experiments in a near weightless environment. Three student teams participated along with nine professional teams in the 57th ESA parabolic flight campaign. All investigated phenomena that are virtually impossible to study on the ground under the normal pull of gravity. The campaign began on 15 October and for the first five days the student teams readied their experiments for flight. This included loading the equipment into the body of the specially modified A-300 Airbus, and checking that everything was working.” More