NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

May 17 and 18, 2008
11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Contrary to popular belief, NASA does not have "anti-gravity chambers" where people can float around like astronauts on the space station. But we do use several facilities to simulate the weightless, or microgravity, conditions of orbit.

One of them, NASA Glenn's Zero Gravity Research Facility, is the largest of its kind in the United States. It is NASA's premier facility for conducting ground-based microgravity research, and you can drop in for a visit.

The Zero Gravity Research Facility was built during the Space Race Era of the 1960s to support research and development of space flight components and fluid systems in a weightless environment. It is a large shaft measuring 510-feet deep that is evacuated to eliminate air resistance. Also called a "drop tower," the shaft allows scientific experiments to free fall for approximately five seconds. As the experiments fall, they are virtually weightless.

Today, NASA-funded researchers from all over the world come to the Glenn facility to study the effects of microgravity on physical phenomena such as combustion and fluid physics. NASA also uses it to develop and test experimental hardware designed to fly aboard the space shuttle and International Space Station.

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