Parabolic flights provide cost-effective, time-limited access to weightless or reduced gravity conditions experienced in space or on planetary surfaces, e.g. the Moon or Mars. These flights facilitate fundamental research - from materials science to space biology - and testing/validation activities that support and complement infrequent and costly access to space. While parabolic flights have been conducted for decades, reference acceleration profiles and processing methods are not widely available - yet are critical for assessing the results of these activities. Here we present a method for collecting, analyzing, and classifying the altered gravity environments experienced during a parabolic flight. We validated this method using a commercially available accelerometer during a Boeing 727-200F flight with $20$ parabolas. All data and analysis code are freely available. Our solution can be easily integrated with a variety of experimental designs, does not depend upon accelerometer orientation, and allows for unsupervised and repeatable classification of all phases of flight, providing a consistent and open-source approach to quantifying gravito-intertial accelerations (GIA), or $g$ levels. As academic, governmental, and commercial use of space increases, data availability and validated processing methods will enable better planning, execution, and analysis of parabolic flight experiments, and thus, facilitate future space activities.
تحميل البحث