Defying Gravity: Milepost 3 Welcomes ESA's Niel Melville! 🚀
Milepost 3 students had an amazing opportunity to meet Niel Melville, a scientist from the European Space Agency (ESA) who helps run zero-gravity flight programs for scientific research. His passion for space, combined with his humor and enthusiasm, made for an unforgettable talk. He explained how parabolic flights create brief moments of weightlessness—just like astronauts experience in space—and connected his work to what we’ve been learning in class. By the end of his visit, students were fascinated, engaged, and full of questions!
By Sabrina Martin, Teacher of Group 6Floating into Science with Niel Melville
What if you could float like an astronaut without leaving Earth? That’s exactly what happens during parabolic flights, which Niel Melville helps coordinate for ESA. His talk at Milepost 3 gave us a thrilling look at the world of zero gravity and how scientists use it to explore the effects of space on people and objects.
Niel explained how parabolic flights work—an aircraft follows a repeated up-and-down pattern, like a rollercoaster in the sky. As the plane climbs steeply, passengers feel 2G, but as it plunges down, they experience a brief period of weightlessness! This allows researchers (and lucky passengers) to float as if they were in space, conducting experiments or simply enjoying the sensation of defying gravity.
One of the most exciting moments of his talk was a hands-on lesson in orbiting, where students threw around celestial plushies to demonstrate how objects stay in orbit due to a balance of gravity and forward motion—turning a complex concept into something we could see in real time!
He also shared short videos demonstrating how gravity differs on Earth, the Moon, and Mars, giving us a glimpse into how movement changes on other worlds. Though brief, these clips reinforced just how different life would be under varying gravitational forces.
By the end of the session, students were buzzing with questions and excitement, eager to learn more about the possibilities of space travel and scientific discovery. A huge thank you to Niel Melville for sharing his knowledge and passion with us—we’re still floating on air from the experience! 🚀✨