A team of Italian researchers reached the edge of space Thursday morning, flying aboard a rocket-powered plane piloted by Virgin Galactic as the space tourism company prepares for monthly commercial flights.
The flight launched from Spaceport America in the New Mexico desert, with two Italian Air Force officers and an engineer with the National Research Council of Italy focusing on a series of microgravity experiments during their few minutes of weightlessness.
One wore a special suit that measured biometric data and physiological responses while another conducted tests using sensors to track heart rate, brain function and other metrics while in microgravity. The third studied how certain liquids and solids mix in that very weak gravity.
