Swiss Parabolic Flights: Development of a Non-Governmental Parabolic Flight Program in Switzerland Based on the Airbus A310 ZERO-G

Abstract

Parabolic flights are one of the most important pillars for research, development, and applications in space. Accordingly, we developed the world’s first non-governmental parabolic flight program using Novespace’s Airbus A310 ZERO-G. Through the flexible combination of academic research with industrial experiments, as well as with the support of private persons and low administrative efforts, we achieved a highly cost-efficient small-scale campaign concept, which is located at the Air Base Dübendorf in Switzerland. The program was very successful, and it resulted in 31 experiments and tests conducted by Universities and organizations in the industry in microgravity, culminating in many scientific publications and in larger subsequent projects for all users. We describe here how we designed, developed, tested, and built up this program. We also discuss the difficulties, problems, and success factors of a project that—for the first time—was successfully built from the “bottom-up”, and which was a large-scale flight research platform by scientists for scientists on a voluntary, non-governmental, and non-commercial basis.