Pilot Felix Baumgartner of Austria seen before his jump at the first manned test flight for Red Bull Stratos in Roswell, New Mexico, USA on March 15 2012. In this test he reach the altitude 21800 meters (71500 ft) and landed safely near Roswell. Photocredit: Jay Nemeth/Red Bull Content Pool. Larger image.

The second series of flights in ESA's 'Fly Your Thesis!' programme concluded recently. After many months of preparation, the 10-day campaign culminated with four student experiments making three parabolic flights aboard the Airbus A300 Zero-G aircraft.

Four student teams, from the UK, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, were selected for this rare opportunity to conduct their own experiments during ESA's 54th Parabolic Flight Campaign.

A new way to fly experiments takes off tomorrow with the first campaign dedicated to research in 'partial' gravity. Scientists on Europe's 'Zero-G' Airbus will experiment with gravity conditions like those on the Moon and Mars.

First flight of the HEAT1X-Tycho Brahe ended with a splashdown of the Tycho spaceship after 86 seconds, 8 kilometers downrange from launch site. The video depicts the pilot (dummy) POV throughout the flight. The parachutes did not deploy fully, so the impact was rough enough to dislodge the observation cupola upon splashdown. The spacecraft was otherwise mostly intact with only minor deformation and water damage. 59.97 as 25fps ~40% slowmotion version for 50Hz/PAL TV.

A hover test of the Armadillo Aerospace Supermod rocket, shot in fantastic 3D. The test was on June 4 2011 at the Armadillo shop in Caddo Mills, TX. Why is the engine pulsing? It's a very large engine for the weight of the vehicle, and it doesn't really want to throttle that low. In actual flight it will be flying all-out, and we don't want to re-write the code to make it hover nicer. It does show how quickly an engine like this can be throttled without special effort.