BORDEAUX (France): Harnessed to the walls, their surgical tools moored down with magnets, a team of French doctors are on Wednesday to attempt the world’s first human operation in zero-gravity, as a test run for performing surgery in space.

The aircraft enabling the pioneering operation is Zero-G, a plane designed and built by Europe to simulate gravity-free conditions, providing a priceless laboratory-in-the-sky to test out new technologies.

Working inside a custom-made operating block, three surgeons, backed by two anaesthetists and a team of army parachutists, will remove a fatty tumour from the forearm of an intrepid volunteer over the course of a three-hour flight.

Miniature surgical tools, held in place with magnets placed around the patient’s stretcher, will be used to adapt to the reduced size of the operating theatre, which was designed by a French elevator manufacturer.

Though there are no current plans for doctors to embark on spacecrafts, the operation is part of a project — on course for completion next year with backing from the European Space Agency (ESA) — to develop surgical robots in space, guided by satellite by Earth-based doctors.

“Since February we have been rehearsing this operation on the ground and in the plane. It is all crystal clear in our heads,” said surgeon Dominique Martin, from Bordeaux University Hospital in southwestern France.—AFP