The objective of this project is to experimentally asses the impact of gravity reference frame on the experience of Virtual Reality (VR), in terms of both subjective response and psyschophysiological reactivity. This work, spearheaded by graduate student Ryann Hee of the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, stems from a larger NASA-funded research effort in the MGH/Harvard Medical School’s Human Performance Lab, led by PI Dr. Aleksandra Stankovic, which seeks to optimize the configuration of VR experiences and modalities for use in long-duration spaceflight. While VR has shown promising potential for addressing behavioral health and performance risks associated with the prolonged isolation, confinement, and limited sensory environments that astronauts face in long-duration spaceflight, many questions still remain for how best to operationally deploy this technology. One such question, and the focus of Ryann’s graduate work on this parabolic flight, is whether mis-matches in gravity reference frames between the visual cues presented in VR and the gravity state of the surrounding environment (like for example, viewing a 1G visual scene set on Earth while experiencing 0G weightlessness of parabolic flight) might provoke unpleasant vestibular system responses or lead to aversive subjective experiences such as motion sickness and disorientation. Using a combination of questionnaire and body-worn sensor data, Ryann will assess how subjects react to matched and mis-matched gravity frames while viewing VR scenes in parabolic flight, with the goal of informing the design of future VR systems for spaceflight.