What is free fall?
Free fall is moving under gravity alone, with nothing holding you up. Anything in free fall feels weightless — including astronauts, who are falling around the Earth rather than towards it.
The word is misleading because it sounds like downward motion. A ball thrown upward is in free fall the moment it leaves your hand: gravity is the only force acting on it.
Weight is what you feel when something pushes back — a floor, a chair, a seat. Remove that and the sensation of weight disappears even though gravity has not.
This is the whole explanation for floating in orbit, and it is worth getting right early, because "there is no gravity in space" has to be unlearned later.
See it happen
Space & OrbitsFalling foreverSource: International Space Station