20-Foot Chamber in Building 353
The 20-Foot Chamber in Building 353 at NASA’s Johnson Space Center houses the capability to test a full range of fluid and chemical processes associated with the collection, processing, storage, and use of planetary-surface resources. Its size facilitates testing of integrated subsystems in a simulated Mars environment, mimicking Mars-like pressures, terrain compositions, and a range of temperatures.
The chamber can uniquely withstand over-pressures of up to 150 pounds per square inch for hazardous in-situ resource utilization testbed operations involving oxygen, hydrogen, and methane. Associated nearby facilities house numerous smaller thermal-vac chambers that can maintain a hard vacuum for lunar simulation, or for a Martian atmosphere with temperatures ranging from ambient to –300°F, and thermal chambers for elevated hardware testing.
Read more about this 20-Foot Chamber at Johnson Space Center.