This is The Guardian.

Our planet is home to millions of species.

But how many of them have you heard of?

I remember at the time thinking, how is this animal real?

Welcome to the Animal Sense Maker, a new podcast series from Tortoise and On the Edge.

In each episode, we'll take you into the wild to discover the species that don't tend to get the spotlight.

One animal every week to make sense of our natural world.

Listen to the animal sense maker wherever you get your podcasts.

A few weeks ago, Guardian Science Correspondent Hannah Devlin received an offer she couldn't refuse.

I actually felt really nervous ahead of this, but at the same time, obviously, quite excited.

Hannah was invited to join the latest intake of the European Space Agency or ESA astronauts on a three-hour training flight in order to experience weightlessness.

There was actually quite little preparation. We went through some safety procedures.

And after an anti-nausea injection, she put on a flight suit and boarded the plane.

The aircraft has to go up at a 50 degree angle, so incredibly steep upwards angle.

And as the plane is accelerating upwards, you're being kind of pressed down into your seat or into the floor.

And you can really feel that.

You get to the end of this steep climb and the airplane's engines all but switch off.

If you were released at that moment, you wouldn't fall directly down to earth you'd follow a sort of curved path almost like a little segment of an orbit around the earth and what the plane is doing during that period is basically just flying around you like a protective bubble.

It's like a magic spell is cast for this period of time and suddenly you just can lift upwards, everyone's floating around.

This hushed ascended.

There's literally no up or down.

And then

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