Neutral buoyancy pool

A neutral buoyancy pool or neutral buoyancy tank is a pool of water in which neutral buoyancy is used to train astronauts for extravehicular activity and the development of procedures. These pools began to be used in the 1960s and were initially just recreational swimming pools; dedicated facilities would be built later.

Prior to May 1960, NASA recognized the possibility of underwater neutral buoyancy simulations, and began testing their efficacy. NASA engaged Environmental Research Associates, a company based in Baltimore, to try neutral buoyancy simulations first in a pool near Langley Research Center. Visitors and other issues disturbed those efforts, so they moved the operation to a swimming pool at the McDonogh School in Maryland, where Scott Carpenter was the first astronaut to participate suited. Then, after difficult EVAs through Gemini 11 in mid-September 1966, the Manned Spacecraft Center (later renamed the Johnson Space Center) fully understood the importance of testing procedures underwater, and sent the Gemini 12 crew to train at McDonogh.

The Neutral Buoyancy Simulator, located at the Marshall Spaceflight Center in Alabama, operated from 1967 through 1997. The facility had three tanks. The first had a diameter of 2.4 meters (8 ft) and a depth of 2.4 meters (8 ft). The second tank was built in 1966 and had a diameter of 7.6 meters (25 ft) and a depth of 4.6 meters (15 ft). A third tank was added around 1968 for Skylab and other planned projects; it had a diameter of 23 meters (75 ft) and was 12 meters (40 ft) deep.

Training in the NBS decreased when the Johnson Space Center opened its own neutral buoyancy pool in 1980, it eventually was closed in 1997.

WIF was used for the Gemini and Apollo programs and was located in Building 5 at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

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