Weightlessness

space · physics · falling · astronauts

Not really zero gravity. Weightlessness doesn't mean gravity disappears. It means you're falling at the same speed as everything around you, so nothing pushes or pulls on you and you feel weightless.

Astronauts float in space. Astronauts orbiting Earth are actually falling toward Earth, but they're also moving forward so fast that they keep missing it. This constant falling makes them float around their spacecraft.

You can feel it on a plane. When a plane takes a steep dive downward, passengers inside briefly experience weightlessness because they're all falling together at the same speed.

Gravity is still there. Earth's gravity is still pulling on weightless astronauts and objects. They're not escaping gravity, they're just in free fall where the pulling force doesn't make anything feel heavy.

Your body feels weird. In weightlessness, blood and fluid float around your body instead of settling downward, which is why astronauts sometimes get puffy faces and feel disoriented at first.