They were
the Original Seven, the chosen, the first of a new breed of
explorers, and in the early 1960s there were few celebrities
on the planet who could compare with them. When they made
their first trip to Houston on July 4, 1962, all the stops
were pulled out. They were given a motorcade along a route
lined with cheering admirers. Speeches were made, the
welcoming ceremony was pure Texan, and a vast barbeque was
thrown in their honor at the Houston Coliseum.
![Two astronauts evaluate techniques in the Weightless Environment Test Facility.](images/wetf.jpg) Wearing extravehicular mobility units, two
astronauts evaluate techniques in the Weightless
Environment Test Facility involving the space walk to
capture the Intelsat satellite. Astronauts Michael
Clifford, left, and Story Musgrave, right, grab the
Intelsat mockup with their hands as part of the
simulation. |
Now, four
decades later, about 160 astronauts are at JSC including some
from overseas. They and the people on the ground supporting
them have some of the most advanced training facilities
available anywhere to prepare them for the exacting tasks and
dangers they will face on actual missions.
The
Weightless Environment Training Facility at the center was
once used to train astronauts for spacewalks. When it proved
inadequate for spacewalk training in anticipation of
International Space Station assembly, plans were put into
motion for the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, a
6.2-million-gallon, 102- by 202- by 40-foot pool. Built to
support ISS construction, the Sonny Carter Training Facility
was retrofitted to house the new NBL, which began operations
in January 1997. Complete with mockups including those of
station components and the Hubble Space Telescope in the
water, the facility is used to train astronauts in procedures
they will perform during upcoming missions.
Ellington
Field hosts center flight operations. The aircraft include a
KC-135 four-engine jet used to produce space-like
weightlessness by flying a series of arcs, a twin-engine
Gulfstream specially modified to perform like a landing
shuttle orbiter, and T-38 jet trainers with state-of-the-art
instruments that are flown by astronauts to maintain their
proficiency. |