Not many people get to experience zero gravity in their lifetimes, but four Northwestern Wisconsin teachers will.
Solon Springs is one of 12 NASA Explorer schools chosen for the uncommon learning experience. Lynn Lesneski and three other teachers will fly in a modified Boeing 727, zero-gravity aircraft.
"It is exciting. Nervous, I'm a little nervous," Lesneski said. "We are not strapped in at all so we'll get to experience what astronauts, I guess, feel."
The teachers will take with them a student-designed experiment to test in the weightless laboratory. Lesneski said the 2½ hour flight over the Gulf of Mexico will include a series of parabolic maneuvers -- steep climbs followed by sharp descents.
"We start at a 45 degree angle and once we reached the top, they gear the plane to basically idle and then we drop down and we continue the arc path," she said.
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That's when they will test their experiment: a toy crossbow.
Lesneski said they will launch Velcro darts at a target and will calculate their path in the weightless environment. Eighth-grader Tyler Long came up with the idea for the experiment.
"I think it's pretty cool that I came up with an idea and they are going to NASA to test it out," Long said.
The teachers will leave Wednesday for the Johnson Space Center in Houston for some astronaut training before the flight.
While there, they will have access to a distance-learning network to communicate with their students back home.
