Australia's first-ever science team has officially launched its research campaign ahead of a series of zero-gravity flights. About this 27 August 2026 the University of Western Australia reported (UWA).
The mission is implemented within the historic agreement between the French company Novespace, by the UWA Space Research Center and the French National Center for Space Research (CNES).
The essence and scope of the experiment
The main goal: The research is aimed at that, to find out, how chemical reactions behave in microgravity conditions. Scientists plan to optimize the processes of extracting fuel and fertilizers from methane and carbon dioxide directly from extraterrestrial resources. This is critical to ensuring future long-duration manned missions, example, to Mars.
Flight program: The main stage of the campaign will take place in October 2026 year. The team will conduct a series of tests during three flights, which will include in general 93 parabolic maneuvers. Each such maneuver will create to 30 seconds of pure weightlessness, enabling scientists to adjust experiment parameters in real time.
Platform: The experiment will be deployed on board the Airbus A310 Zero-G aircraft, which is owned by Novespace and is the world's largest civilian platform for microgravity research.
The technical part of the project is headed by Dr. Zhe Lu (Dr Zhe Lu) together with professors Danail Obreshkov and Khuntsi Sun. An important feature of the campaign was the involvement of students: based on the results of a nationwide competition, three undergraduate students were included in the mission, which will help scientists directly during weightlessness. By now, the technical team has fully completed the assembly and calibration of the experimental setup according to the schedule.
Previously, this same Airbus A310 was used by the first Australian astronaut Catherine Bennell-Pegg during her training at the European Space Agency (THIS). Now UWA's mission is paving the way for regular access by Australian civilian scientists to large manned flights in microgravity.
Source: https://spaceanddefense.io