Erin said of the experience: "The flights were amazing. We couldn't have hoped for a more successful project and have collected some good data. We are now processing the data from the flights."
The DEPLOY! project is a collaboration between the 蜜柚社区, University of Pisa and the University of Parma with funding provided by the , which provides funding and support for university students to develop their research in the fields of space science and technology, and the UK Space Agency.
Student Erin joined the team following a lecture about the project by School of Architecture, Technology and Engineering Principal Lecturer and mentor for the first European Low Gravity Research Association mentoring scheme (ELGRA) . Dr Miché then introduced her to team leader Alessandro Billi, an aerospace engineer at the University of Pisa.
Parabolic flights involve a flight pattern whereby the plane goes into freefall producing zero gravity conditions. During each of three flights researchers went from 1.8 times the force of gravity to weightlessness 30 times per flight as the plane climbed to an altitude of 7,500m before beginning its dive. Each time the flight went into freefall researchers had around 20 seconds of weightlessness to conduct their experiments.