Research in microgravity

Everyone has seen images of astronauts floating weightless around inside a spacecraft. Weightlessness is not due to a lack of gravity, but rather to the spacecraft and the astronaut being in free fall toward the Earth. This happens because the orbital speed is just enough so the pull of gravity bends it into an arc that is collateral to the surface of the Earth but always at the same distance from it.

Weightlessness occurs in all free fall; for shorter periods of 30 – 40 seconds, it may occur on board aircraft. But longer periods of weightlessness are possible only in a spacecraft or a space station.

Many phenomena on Earth are not well understood because the pull of gravity masks other effects. So Earthbound phenomena, such as plant growth or oilfield diffusion, can be more fully understood by studying them in weightlessness.

Understanding plant growth in space is essential to any future manned Mars mission, which must take plants along to provide oxygen and food for the astronauts.

The International Space Station (ISS) is ideal for conducting studies in weightlessness, because experiments can be conducted over several months. Norwegian scientists have put forth proposals for performing experiments on board ISS.

The Norwegian research communities are small but of high quality. Out of more than 300 proposals for research on board ISS, the five with Norwegian participants ranked among the top twenty. Norwegian scientists are concerned mostly with plant growth in weightlessness and in dust formation in space.


The Plant Biology Centreat the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) has been selected to support users and serve as an operations centre for one of the key experiments on board the Space Station

The University of Tromsøconducts leading-edge research in dust formation in space and the upper atmosphere, and will take part in an experiment to produce this dust on board the Space Station.