NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Lab @benwl

Uploaded August 2007 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago

NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory located at the Johnson Space Center in Houston TX is the world's largest indoor pool. Astronauts use the pool to practice EVA's and installing various components on the International Space Station. This video is sped up 8x. The large white cylinder being transported in the video is s high fidelity mockup of the US Harmony node 2. It provides a passageway between three station science experiment facilities: the U.S. Destiny Laboratory, the Kibo Japanese Experiment Module, and the European Columbus Laboratory.

The aluminum node is 7.2 meters (23.6 feet) long and 4.4 meters (14.5 feet) in diameter. Its pressurized volume is 70 cubic meters (2472 cubic feet, and its launch weight is approximately 30,000 pounds (13,600 kilograms). The real module is slated to launch on STS-120.

The support SCUBA divers can be seen on the surface of the water. They breath Nitrox (air enriched with more oxygen) out of twin SCUBA tanks so that they can stay under water for up to 3 hours while they support the astronauts.

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$Diagnostics Used For The VASIMR VX-200i This is one test firing in a series of experiments with the VASIMR VX-200 plasma rocket prototype. The rockets 1st stage (a Helicon plasma source) was fired at 30 kW using a state-of-the-art solid state RF power supply, and the rockets 2nd stage was fired at 100 kW using a second solid state RF power supply. Argon gas was used as the propellant, and gives a distinctive purple/blue/UV glow. The second half of the video is slowed down to 1/10 speed during the firing of the second stage. The plasma diagnostics that can be seen in this video are situated on an x-y motion stage capable of moving side to side 200cm and in an out 500cm with 0.5mm precision. The diagnostics include an Retarding Potential Analyzer (RPA) to measure ion energy, a Force Target to measure the plasma thrust, a 10-collector Langmuir probe array to measure plasma properties, and an additional Langmuir probe to measure the plasma properties within the rocket core. A second stationary 10-collector Langmuir probe array can be seen hanging from ceiling. Because of the extreme temperatures and heating within the plasma exhaust, the diagnostics are all constructed out of refractory metals, high temperature ceramics, or graphite (or all three). The rocket and everything else seen in this video is located within a vacuum chamber, used to simulate the vacuum environment of space. The VX-200 is the precursor to the VF-200, a flight demonstration unit that is intended to fly on the International Space Station (ISS). http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/dec/HQ_08-332_VASMIR_engine.html www.adastrarocket.com$

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