The Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) is an

astronaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a List of human spaceflight programs, human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member of a spa ...

training facility and neutral buoyancy pool operated by

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

and located at the Sonny Carter Training Facility, near the

Johnson Space Center The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) is NASA's center for human spaceflight in Houston, Texas (originally named the Manned Spacecraft Center), where human spaceflight training, research, and flight controller, flight control are conducted. ...

Houston Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

. The NBL's main feature is a large indoor pool of water, in which astronauts may perform simulated EVA tasks in preparation for upcoming missions. Trainees wear suits designed to provide

neutral buoyancy Neutral buoyancy occurs when an object's average density is equal to the density of the fluid in which it is immersed, resulting in the buoyant force balancing the force of gravity that would otherwise cause the object to sink (if the body's de ...

to simulate the

microgravity Weightlessness is the complete or near-complete absence of the sensation of weight, i.e., zero apparent weight. It is also termed zero g-force, or zero-g (named after the g-force) or, incorrectly, zero gravity. Weight is a measurement of the fo ...

that astronauts experience during

spaceflight Spaceflight (or space flight) is an application of astronautics to fly objects, usually spacecraft, into or through outer space, either with or without humans on board. Most spaceflight is uncrewed and conducted mainly with spacecraft such ...

History

In the late 1980s NASA began to consider replacing its previous neutral-buoyancy training facility, the Weightless Environment Training Facility (WETF). The WETF, located at Johnson Space Center, had been successfully used to train astronauts for numerous missions, but its pool was too small to hold useful mock-ups of space station components of the sorts intended for the mooted Space Station ''Freedom'', or its successor, the International Space Station. This new pool was going to be on Johnson Space Center property and was planned to be by , with a depth of . To save money, it was downsized and placed inside an existing structure. NASA purchased the structure that now holds the NBL from

McDonnell Douglas McDonnell Douglas Corporation was a major American Aerospace manufacturer, aerospace manufacturing corporation and defense contractor, formed by the merger of McDonnell Aircraft and the Douglas Aircraft Company in 1967. Between then and its own ...

in the early 1990s and began refitting it as a neutral-buoyancy training center in 1995. File:NASA Commercialization Training Camp and NFL 3.jpg, The tank includes mock-ups of International Space Station modules and other training materials Image:NASA Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory control area.jpg, Simulation control area File:US Navy Divers practice recovery operations at JSC (jsc2022e045101).jpg, Orion capsule recovery diver practice

Facility features

The diving tank is in length, wide, and deep, and contains of water. The NBL contains full-scale mock-ups of

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Assembly of the International Space Station, assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United ...

(ISS) modules and payloads, as well as visiting vehicles such as the

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency The is the Japanese national Aeronautics, air and space agency. Through the merger of three previously independent organizations, JAXA was formed on 1 October 2003. JAXA is responsible for research, technology development and launch of satell ...

(JAXA) HTV, the

European Space Agency The European Space Agency (ESA) is a 23-member International organization, international organization devoted to space exploration. With its headquarters in Paris and a staff of around 2,547 people globally as of 2023, ESA was founded in 1975 ...

ATV, the

SpaceX Dragon Dragon is a family of spacecraft developed and produced by American private space transportation company SpaceX. The first variant, later named SpaceX Dragon 1, Dragon 1, flew 23 cargo missions to the International Space Station (ISS) between ...

, and the

Orbital Sciences Corporation Orbital Sciences Corporation (commonly referred to as Orbital) was an American company specializing in the design, manufacture, and launch of small- and medium- class space and launch vehicle systems for commercial, military and other governmen ...

Cygnus. Full-scale mock-ups of equipment such as the

Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable launch system, reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. ...

payload bay and Hubble Space Telescope have been removed, as they are no longer needed for training. The facility contains a

hyperbaric chamber A diving chamber is a vessel for human occupation, which may have an entrance that can be sealed to hold an internal pressure significantly higher than ambient pressure, a pressurised gas system to control the internal pressure, and a supply of ...

for treating any dive related emergencies, as well as an

altitude chamber A hypobaric chamber, or altitude chamber, is a chamber used during aerospace or high terrestrial altitude research or training to simulate the effects of high altitude on the human body, especially hypoxia (low oxygen) and hypobaria (low ambien ...

to simulate physiological effects of flying.

References

{{coord, 29.6071, -95.1439, region:US-TX_type:landmark, display=title Neutral buoyancy pools Johnson Space Center 1995 establishments in Texas

History

Facility features

See also

References