YOU TRY IT! Floating Freely

Spaceflight is actually falling all the way around the Earth without hitting it. That’s all that weightlessness is—just falling without ever hitting the ground. On Earth, we can only experience this for a few seconds before we hit the ground, but here is a way you can show how all objects fall at the same speed, and why objects in space float in front of your face.

WHAT YOU NEED

1. A swimming pool with diving board
2. A ball

WHAT TO DO

1. Stand at the end of the diving board and hold the ball straight out in front of you.
2. Jump off the diving board as high as you can.
3. Let go of the ball while you are in the air (don’t throw it).
4. You and the ball should hit the water at the same time.
5. You have just experienced weightlessness like an astronaut!

When anything is falling, it’s weightless. Both you and the ball are weightless when you are in the air. And the neat thing about falling is that gravity makes all objects fall at the same speed.

When you see astronauts floating around inside their spaceship, it looks like there is no gravity in space. Actually, there is lots of gravity up there, almost as much as there is down here on the ground. The reason the astronauts are floating is because they’re falling all the time.

So just like you and the ball hitting the water together, astronauts, their spaceships, and everything inside them is falling together around the Earth, which is why everything is weightless and why everything you do in space—moving from one side of a room to another, eating dinner, brushing your teeth—happens while floating freely.