Frederic Gai's scientific contributions

... Since 2015, parabolic flights for research are performed using the Airbus A310 ZERO-G. It is the largest airplane for parabolic flights world- wide [64], owned and operated by Novespace, a subsidiary of the French National Space Center (CNES). A parabolic flight campaign usually consists of 3 consecutive flights conducting 31 parabolas each. ...

... For the validation phase, a large variety of microgravity validation platforms are available, such as parabolic flights [49,50] which allow for an affordable alternative to test technology in microgravity conditions before its integration at a system level. Drop towers, such as ZARM drop tower in Bremen [51], and random positioning machines [52,53] are other examples on how this can test this technology can be tested before launch in a cost-efficient manner. ...

... For these purposes, CNES, DLR (the German space agency) and ESA (the European space agency) have organised 170 campaigns since 1984, with several airplanes: CNES' Caravelle, NASA's KC-135, the Russian CTC Ilyushin IL-76-MDK, the Airbus A300 Zero-G and the A310. In addition, two Joint European Partial-g Parabolic Flight Campaigns were organised by ESA, CNES and DLR using the Airbus A300 Zero-G for experiments at reduced gravity levels, typically at Moon and Mars g levels [1,2]. ...

... Several of the experiments discussed below were performed on parabolic flights. This kind of platform offers microgravity of 20-22 s duration (per parabola) with a residual acceleration smaller than 0.05 g ( (Pletser et al. 2015)). Owing to the significant level of residual acceleration, this platform is not suitable for all experiments. ...

... Concepts vary in means of propulsion, flight, landing, and also flight crew (Athan, 2007). Suborbital flight simulation merely applies to concepts, which require onboard flight crews, e.g., Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, XCOR Aerospace's Lynx Mark II, but also future point-to-point space transportation such as Airbus' Spaceplane (Chavagnac et al., 2013). Based on public information, we can make some general projections on the suborbital flight envelope (Fig. 16.2.20) ...

... Nevertheless, this study inspired the authors at thinking on this experiment as a suitable to investigate material properties. With advances in X-ray tomography, similar experiments to the one proposed by [7] could be performed, e.g., in a drop tower [17], as an alternative to investigate elastic and frictional properties of granular materials, as the behavior seems to be quite sensitive to both. ...

... Treatment of unforeseen health events in space is a major concern that can jeopardize crew health and mission success (Hamilton et al., 2008;Alexander 2016;Patel et al., 2020). This concern has given rise to several studies on open surgery, laparoscopic surgery, and robot-assisted surgery as well as studies of human physiology in microgravity (for a review of the literature, see Panesar et al., 2018(Melton et al., 2001Campbell 2002;Dawson, 2008;Kirkpatrick et al., 2009a;Kirkpatrick et al., 2009b;Kirkpatrick et al., 2009c;Doarn et al., 2009;Pletser et al., 2009;Haidegger et al., 2011;Canga et al., 2016;Ashrafian et al., 2017;Panesar and Ashkan 2018;Baker et al., 2019;Hinkelbein et al., 2020;Kirkpatrick et al., 2020;Robertson et al., 2020). Although in space the risk of trauma is low, objects in movement conserve their mass and still carry a kinetic energy (Komorowski et al., 2018;STEMonstrations 2022) so that damages to the human body are likely to occur. ...

... During the reduced gravity period of, respectively, microgravity, lunar and Martian parabolas, a transitory phase of a few seconds appears first, with variations of about 10 À1 g around respectively 0, 0.16 and 0.38 g in the Z direction, followed by a period of respectively approximately 20, 25 and 32 s with acceleration levels of about, respectively, a few 10 À2 , 0.16 and 0.38 g. Accelerations along the aircraft longitudinal X-axis (aft to front) and transversal Y-axis (right to left) are less than 10 À2 g for all parabola types [12]. ...

... Many issues of relevance for the preparation of future human space exploration that includes stays on the surface of planetary bodies can also be investigated ( Figure 5). Some experiment results of European partial-g campaigns can be found in [8,9]. ...

... PF also makes it possible to reproduce gravity conditions on Mars (0.38 g) for 32 s and on the Moon (0.16 g) for 25 s (Pletser et al., 2012), but this review only considers the results obtained by modeling 0 G. ...