Zurich – The UZH Space Hub is holding its first research flight campaign this week. A blimp will be used to discover plastic in water from above and an airbus performing parabolic flights will enable experiments in zero gravity.

This year, the newly opened Switzerland Innovation Park Zurich repurposed old hangars on the military airfield in Dübendorf into office space. This created a novel combination of airfield and laboratory, where joint research projects are now being carried out by the UZH Space Hub with its partners from air and space travel.

The first research flight campaigns will take place from 11 to 13 June, as the University of Zurich (UZH) reported in a press release. A blimp flight with geographers on board will be testing highly specialised image sensors. The goal is to find plastic in water from above and contribute to improving the identification of plastic pollution in the oceans.

An Airbus A310 ZERO-G will also take off from Dübendorf this week and perform parabolic manoeuvres with repeated extreme ascents and nosedives, which creates zero gravity conditions for a duration of 22 seconds each. On these zero-gravity flights, a number of scientific experiments will be carried out. For example, the Balgrist University Hospital will investigate the influence of weightlessness on the human musculoskeletal system, while UZH will examine how cells respond to changes in gravity. The parabolic flights will also welcome an international team of scientists: new research equipment for the International Space Station (ISS) and production processes for space application by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) will be tested.

The UZH Space Hub and Swiss SkyLab foundation have adopted a globally unique funding model. The costs are not covered by major space agencies, but shared by industry, academia and private persons. This has succeeded in significantly reducing the costs for academia.

“We want to provide science and innovation with straightforward access to space and make research take off,” says Oliver Ullrich, director of the Space Hub. “The UZH Space Hub’s unique combination of innovation park and airport can deliver important impulses for business, industry, science and innovation.” 

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