NASA’s Grueling Underwater Test for Astronauts
HOUSTON—Before astronauts can launch into space, they have to go for a swim.
The pool sits inside a big, windowless building in Houston, on the grounds of NASA’s Johnson Space Center. It is about 40 feet deep, and holds enough water to fill several Olympic-size pools. Beneath the surface, shrouded in the bluish tint of the water, is a replica of the International Space Station.
This facility, known as the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, is where future astronauts train for spacewalks outside the ISS. It’s strange to think that learning to survive in a lifeless void requires bobbing around inside a pool, but water provides the best medium on Earth for simulating the weightlessness of space. Stick an astronaut candidate inside a spacesuit, add some weights, and she, 260 miles above Earth.
