European aircraft parabolic flights for microgravity research, applications and exploration: A review

•Aircraft parabolic flights are a useful tool for microgravity research.•ESA, CNES, DLR use the Airbus A310 ZERO-G managed by Novespace for their campaigns.•More than 130 European microgravity research campaigns were performed since 1984.•More than 1500 experiments were conducted in Physics, Life Sciences and Technology.•The European parabolic flight microgravity research program is the most successful one in the world.

Aircraft parabolic flights provide repetitively periods of reduced gravity whose duration depends on the target reduced gravity level and on the type of aircraft used. Typical durations for a large aircraft varies between approximately 20 s for a 0 g environment and 32 s for a Martian g level environment. This paper presents the European parabolic flights, their objectives, the aircraft presently used and results of some experiments.