Mikrogravitation

Mikrogravitation, or microgravity, refers to environments in which the acceleration due to gravity is greatly reduced such that the apparent weight of objects is extremely small. It does not mean the absence of gravity, but rather that inertial forces, buoyancy, and vehicle-induced accelerations are small enough that gravitational effects are largely suppressed. This state enables researchers to observe physical and biological processes without the dominant influence of Earth’s gravity.

Microgravity is most prominently realized in orbital spaceflight, where spacecraft and contents are in continuous free fall around the Earth. Objects inside experience near-weightlessness, though residual accelerations from tidal gravity, atmospheric drag, thruster activity, and vibrations persist. Other production methods include drop towers, parabolic flights, neutral buoyancy facilities, and suborbital or sounding rocket missions. Drop towers provide only a few seconds of microgravity in vacuum; parabolic flights yield about 20 to 25 seconds per parabola; neutral buoyancy tanks simulate weightlessness for training and testing, but do not produce true microgravity; sounding rockets offer several minutes of microgravity in a single flight.

Applications span fluid dynamics, combustion, materials science, crystal growth, biology, and fundamental physics, where gravity can obscure phenomena such as convection, sedimentation, and phase formation. Researchers also use microgravity to test spacecraft hardware and manufacturing processes intended for space environments. Limitations include residual g-jitter, gradient and tidal effects, limited durations for certain platforms, and the fact that some simulations (like neutral buoyancy) are not true microgravity environments.