science

Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory

Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory rather than just read about it. In short: The Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) is an astronaut training facility and neutral buoyancy pool operated by NASA and located at the Sonny Carter Training Facility, near the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. 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.

Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory — illustration

Key takeaways

Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) is an astronaut training facility and neutral buoyancy pool operated by NASA and located at the Sonny Carter Training Facility, near the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. 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 to simulate the microgravity that astronauts experience during spaceflight.

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 72 meters (235 ft) by 41 meters (135 ft), with a depth of 18 meters (60 ft). To save money, it was downsized and placed inside an existing structure. NASA purchased the structure that now holds the NBL from McDonnell Douglas in the early 1990s and began refitting it as a neutral-buoyancy training center in 1995.

Facility features The diving tank is 202 feet (62 m) in length, 102 feet (31 m) wide, and 40 feet (12 m) deep, and contains 6.2 million US gallons (23,000 cubic metres) of water. The NBL contains full-scale mock-ups of International Space Station (ISS) modules and payloads, as well as visiting vehicles such as the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) HTV, the European Space Agency ATV, the SpaceX Dragon, and the Orbital Sciences Corporation Cygnus. Full-scale mock-ups of equipment such as the Space Shuttle payload bay and Hubble Space Telescope have been removed, as they are no longer needed for training. The facility contains a hyperbaric chamber for treating any dive related emergencies, as well as an altitude chamber to simulate physiological effects of flying.

See also Neutral buoyancy pool – Pool of water in which neutral buoyancy is used to train astronauts Weightlessness – Absence of the sensation of weight Reduced-gravity aircraft, also known as Vomit Comet – Aircraft used to create brief weightlessness Neutral Buoyancy Simulator – Historic astronaut training facility

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory

In research: Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1995 establishments in Texas, Johnson Space Center, Neutral buoyancy pools, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory in simple terms?

Why does Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory.