Researcher Josh Colwell’s experiment is getting a ride on the Vomit-comet – a plane that simulates microgravity environments. Using particles similar to the dust and dirt on an asteroid, Colwell wants to observe how they behave in microgravity.

There’s a lot of interest in mining asteroids for minerals like platinum. So Colwell hopes his findings will help design space suits and tools for future asteroid explorers.“…and the interest in this, from NASA, is trying to understand what kind of environments astronauts and spacecraft will encounter when we’re visiting these small asteroids in the future”, said Colwell.

The vomit-comet gives Colwell about 20 seconds of microgravity to run the experiment, and takes off later next year.