Bremen Drop Tower

The Bremen Drop Tower, known in German as the Fallturm Bremen, is a microgravity research facility built between 1988 and 1990 and operated by the Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM) at the University of Bremen, Germany. The concrete tower stands 146 meters tall around a 122 meter drop tube evacuated to about 10 pascals before each experiment, and a capsule released inside it experiences about 4.74 seconds of weightlessness, extended to more than 9 seconds when a catapult mechanism installed in 2004 launches the capsule upward before its fall. Scientists use the facility to study materials, fluids and biological systems under near weightless conditions without flying an actual spaceflight mission. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/