Vladimir Pletser in free-float during parabolic flights aboard the NASA DC9/30 in October 1995.
Vladimir Pletser (born 28 February 1956) is Director of Space Training Operations at
Blue Abyss since 2018, where he is in charge of developing astronaut training programs. From 2016 to early 2018, he was a Visiting Professor and Scientific Adviser at the Technology and Engineering Centre for Space Utilization (CSU) of the
Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China. He supported the preparation of scientific experiments in microgravity for the Chinese
Tiangong space station and for aircraft parabolic flights. He worked previously from 1985 till early 2016 as a senior Physicist Engineer at the
European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) of
ESA.
He is an expert in
microgravity during aircraft
parabolic flights for which he holds a world record.[1] He is known as ‘Mister Parabolic Flights’, ‘Mister Parabolas’,[2] ‘Homo Parabolicus’[2] or ‘Mister Microgravity’.[3]
An
astronaut candidate for Belgium since 1991, he spent two months in training in 1995 at NASA's
Johnson Space Center in Houston. Selected by the
Mars Society in 2001, he participated in three international campaigns of crewed Mars mission simulations.
Graduated in Latin-Mathematics from the Institut Saint-Boniface of Brussels in 1973 and in Special Scientific from the Collège Saint-Michel of Brussels in 1974; graduated from the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, as civil engineer in mechanics, specialism dynamics and systems (1979), Master in physics in space geodesy (1980), and Ph.D. in physics in
astronomy and
astrophysics (1990).
In 1985, Pletser joined the Microgravity Project and Platform Division in the Human Spaceflight and Operations Directorate at
ESA’s
ESTEC in
Noordwijk,
Netherlands.
Development of scientific instrumentation
Since 1985, he has followed the technical development of scientific payloads and was directly involved in 30 microgravity experiments carried out during space missions as Experiment Coordinator and Responsible for ground operations for experiments:
in
fluid physics with the Advanced Fluid Physics Module[4] on Spacelab D2 -
STS-55 mission of April 1993, and the Bubble, Drop and Particle Unit[5][6] on Spacelab LMS –
STS-78 mission of June 1996.
in
protein crystallization with the Advanced Protein Crystallization Facility[5] on Spacehab-
STS-95 mission of October 1998, and the Protein Crystallisation Diagnostics Facility[7] (PCDF) that flew aboard the ISS
Columbus module (
STS-122) from February 2008 to July 2009 (
STS-119/
STS-127).
on zeolites with the instruments Zeogrid[8] in the ISS Russian
Zvezda module in October 1992 and Nanoslab[8] in the ISS
Destiny module in October 1992 and October 1993.
on symbiotic processes between fishes and algae with the instrument AquaHab[9] aboard the Russian satellite Foton M3 in September 2007.
From 1994 to 2006, he took part in the organization and the flights of 8 ESA Student campaigns with CNES’s
Caravelle in 1994, NASA’s
KC-135/931 in 1995 and the
Airbus A300 ZERO-G from 2000 to 2006. Since 2010, he participates in ESA's ‘Fly Your Thesis
[1]’ programme,[16] inviting European University students to submit experiment proposals related to their thesis research. The selected experiments take then part in research campaigns.
Brussels and Belgium student campaigns
In 2002, he initiated a new project in Belgium, to have secondary school students flying in weightlessness during ESA Student campaigns. Collaborating with the Region of
Brussels-Capital and the Euro Space Society, he organized a contest for secondary schools in Brussels[17] inviting students to propose experiments to be realized in microgravity. Five teams of Brussels secondary schools[18] took part in the third ESA Student campaign in July 2003 aboard the
Airbus A300 ZERO-G operating for the first time out of
France and landing in
Brussels. This pedagogical project encountered such a large success that it was repeated in 2006 with the
Belgian Federal Science Policy Office and the Euro Space Society for secondary school students of the whole of Belgium.[19] In July 2006, six teams of Belgian secondary schools participated in the ninth ESA Student campaign with the Airbus A300 landing again in
Brussels.
Participation in other campaigns
Pletser was invited to participate in several other campaigns. In 1992, he participated in a
DLR campaign aboard NASA's
KC-135/930 in Houston to train German astronauts on AFPM[4] operations prior to the Spacelab D2 -
STS-55 mission. In 1993, he participated in parabolic flights aboard a
Fouga Magister of the
Belgian Air Force to measure
microgravity levels during flights. In 1995, he was invited by
NASA to participate in a campaign aboard the
DC-9/30 of the
Lewis Research Center to prepare a BDPU[6] experiment for the Spacelab LMS -
STS-78 mission. In 1999, he was invited to participate in two campaigns of the
CNES and the
DLR with the
Airbus A300 ZERO-G as subject of a medical experiment. In 2004, he was invited to fly aboard the Austrian Short Skyvan aircraft.[20] In 2011, the
Canadian Space Agency invited him to participate in a series of parabolic flights aboard the
Falcon 20 in
Ottawa to support a
combustion experiment. In 2016, he participated as a visiting professor in the Space Studies Programme (SSP-16) of the
International Space University (ISU) taking place at the
Technion in
Haifa,
Israël. He takes part in a series of parabolic flights on board a
Grob G103a Twin II glider organized by ISU's Space Sciences Department, performing several experiments proposed by ISU students, conducting therefore the first scientific parabolic flights in the Middle East.
Number of experiments and parabolas
During the 90 campaigns in which he took part, he supervised a total of 1000
microgravity experiments. He was Principal Investigator of 11 experiments of micro-
accelerometric measurement of
microgravity levels and of 2 fluid physics experiments. He participated as operator in 79 physical science experiments and as subject in 95 medical and physiological experiments in preparation for several missions on
Spacelab,
Spacehab, the Russian space station
Mir, and the
International Space Station. He accumulated 7389 parabolas, totaling 39h 34m in weightlessness, equivalent to 26.3
Earth orbits, more than the first American, the first Russian, or the first Chinese astronauts. He accumulated a total of 53m in Martian gravity and 50m in lunar gravity during partial-g parabolic flights.
World record for the number of aircraft in parabolic flight
Vladimir Pletser in Martian Extra-vehicular suit at the
FMARS
In 2001, Pletser was selected[21] by the
Mars Society among 250 candidates to participate in July 2001 in the first international Mars crewed mission simulation campaign at the
Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) on the
Devon Island in the
Canadian Arctic with the FMARS-2 crew. He conducted an experiment aiming at detecting subsurface water by a seismic method.[22] Invited again by The
Mars Society, he participated in April 2002 in a second international crewed Mars mission simulation campaign[23] in the
Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in the
Utah Desert with the crew MDRS-5 in strict isolation for two weeks. He was responsible for a psychological experiment on growing plants in the Mars habitat.[24] During these two missions, he kept a diary at the FMARS[25] and at the MDRS.[26] He published a book[27] about these two simulations. In 2009, in the frame of ESA's EuroGeoMars project[28] to study human and scientific aspects of future crewed missions on extra-planetary surfaces, he participated in a third Martian simulation campaign at the MDRS as Crew Commander of Crew MDRS-76. He was responsible for a series of experiments on human crew aspects.[29] During these three campaigns, he participated in a total of 36 experiments in geophysics, biology, navigation and reconnaissance, psychology and human factors. He accumulated a total of 44h 30m of simulated
Extra-vehicular activity (EVA) time during 16 simulated EVA expeditions, including 9 as Commander.
ESA and NASA astronaut selections
Pletser was selected in May 1991 by Belgium among 550 candidates as laboratory specialist astronaut candidate,[30] with four other candidates, including
Marianne Merchez and
Frank De Winne, but he was not retained at the end of the ESA selection in May 1992. In May 1992, he applied to NASA as
Payload Specialist astronaut candidate for the 2nd International Microgravity Laboratory (IML-2)
Spacelab -
STS-65 mission. Although recommended by members of the IML-2 Mission Investigator Working Group, his application was not considered by
NASA. In January 1995, he was officially presented[31] by
Belgium as a
Payload Specialist astronaut candidate for
NASA’s Life and Microgravity Spacelab (LMS) -
STS-78 mission. Four other candidates were presented respectively by the French Space Agency (
CNES), the
Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the
Italian Space Agency (ASI) and
ESA. After recommendation of the LMS Mission Investigator Working Group, the five candidates reported in March 1995 to NASA's
Johnson Space Center for medical examinations and information sessions on medical experiments. Pletser passed successfully the medical selection and was unofficially informed that one of the places as alternate
Payload Specialist astronaut would be proposed to him, having received the most recommendations of the LMS Mission Investigator Working Group. He started with the three other selected candidates two months of training at NASA's Johnson Space Center, at the Payload Crew Training Complex of NASA's
Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, at
ESTEC and in several American university laboratories. However, NASA announced in May 1995 the selection of Dr.
Jean-Jacques Favier (
CNES) and Dr.
Robert Thirsk (
CSA) as
Payload Specialist astronauts, and Dr
Luca Urbani (
ASI) and Mr.
Pedro Duque (ESA) as alternate Payload Specialist astronauts.
Academic and scientific career
Pletser is visiting professor at several universities in Europe, Africa, Asia, and America. He has given several hundreds of conferences, seminars, and invited lectures in
microgravity research,
astronautics,
astronomy,
geophysics,
Mars exploration, and
SETI in thirty universities and academies and for schools and the general public in Europe, Africa and Asia. As part of the awareness program for youth scientific and technical education and careers[32] of the Government of the
Brussels-Capital Region, 16,000 school students of Brussels attended his conferences between 2001 and 2011. His theoretical research on the
cosmogony of the solar system led to the publication in 1990 of a doctoral thesis[33] on distance relations among
planets and
satellites, where the radial positions of the new satellites and
rings of
Uranus and
Neptune are calculated before their discovery by the
Voyager 2 probe.[34] In 1998, he demonstrated the hypothesis that the
Ishango bone, the oldest mathematical tool of humankind, is a primitive calculator in bases 6 and 12.[35] Having been subject of an
electroencephalographic experiment in parabolic flights in 1991, he took part in the result analysis and proposed a new method based on the
chaotic nonlinear dynamics,[36] yielding in 1999 to the awarding of a patent.[37] He is pursuing research in Number Theory, on Generalised Mersenne numbers, on sums of powers of consecutive integers,[38][39] on multiple of triangular numbers,[40][41] on characteristics of Pell's equation solutions.[42] He is a regular contributor to the
On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences.
Awards and honors
ESA Academy Certificates for Contribution to ESA/
ELGRA Gravity-Related Summer Schools (2018-2023)
^Pletser, V.; Rouquette, S.; Friedrich, U.; Clervoy, J.F.; Gharib, T.; Gai, F.; Mora, C. (2015). "European parabolic flight campaigns with Airbus A300 ZERO-G: looking back at the A300 and looking forward to the A310". Advances in Space Research. 56 (5): 1003–1013.
doi:
10.1016/j.asr.2015.05.022.
^Pletser, V.; Rouquette, S.; Friedrich, U.; Clervoy, J.F.; Gharib, T.; Gai, F. (2013). "Two Joint European Partial-g Parabolic Flight Campaigns for science and exploration at Moon and Mars gravity levels". Paper IAC-13.A2.3.11x19544, Microgravity Sciences and Process Symposium, Session A2 and Space Exploration Symposium, Session A3, 64th IAF Congress, Beijing.
^Callens, N.; Ventura-Traveset, J.; De Lophem, T.L.; Lopez de Echazarreta, C.; Pletser, V.; Van Loon, J. (2011). "ESA Parabolic Flights, Drop Tower and Centrifuge Opportunities for University Students". Microgravity Science and Technology. 23 (2): 181–189.
Bibcode:
2016MicST..28..587P.
doi:
10.1007/s12217-016-9515-8.
S2CID255560560.
^Pletser, V. (2003). En avant, Mars ! Chroniques de simulations martiennes (in French). Labor. p. 197.
ISBN978-2-8040-1773-6. "En avant, Mars !" (in French). Labrot. 30 June 2002. Retrieved 28 January 2012.
^Foing, B.H.; Boche-Sauvan, L.; Stoker, C.; Ehrenfreund, P.; Wendt, L.; Gross, C.; Thiel, C.; Peters, S.; Borst, A.; Zhavaleta, J.; Sarrazin, P.; Blake, D.; Page, J.; Pletser, V.; Monaghan, E. (2010), "ExoHab & EuroGeoMars campaigns: Human exploration and astrobiology",
ExoHab & EuroGeoMars campaigns: Human exploration and astrobiology(PDF), Proceedings Astrobiology Science Conference: Evolution and Life: Surviving Catastrophes and Extremes on Earth and Beyond, Paper 5625
^Pletser, V.; Foing, B.H. (2011). "European Contribution to Human Aspect Investigations for Future Planetary Habitat Definition Studies: Field Tests at MDRS on Crew Time Utilisation and Habitat Interfaces". Microgravity Science and Technology. 23 (2): 199–214.
Bibcode:
2011MicST..23..199P.
doi:
10.1007/s12217-010-9251-4.
S2CID122357805.
^Pletser, V. (1990). "On exponential distance relations in planetary and satellite systems, observations and origin". Doctoral Dissertation, Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics G. Lemaître, Dept of Physics, Faculty of Sciences, Université Catholique de Louvain: 164.
^US 6658369, Pletser, V. & Quadens, O., "Method and device for the predictive determination of a parameter representative of the mental activity of a person", published 2003-12-02