Week 6 Microgravity environments on Earth

Introduction

This week you will look at how microgravity environments can be achieved on Earth and how planets are formed.

From Week 1, you know that the Earth's gravity pulls objects and the ISS towards the Earth’s surface. This week, you will see how drop towers and parabolic flights can also simulate microgravity environments.

Finally, you will look at how the formation of planets can be modelled.

By the end of this week, you should be able to:

• understand terminal velocity in the context of a microgravity environment
• explain the types of scientific research benefiting from microgravity environments, focusing on planet formation
• calculate speed, given distance and time data
• interpret diagrams and extract information from them.