Video: The Closest You Can Get to Space Without Leaving Earth
Looking out from inside the enormous mouth of NASA's giant thermal vacuum chamber, located at NASA's Johnson Space Center, the test model of the James Webb Space Telescope's backplane is seen sliding in on the rails. NASA
Where the extreme cold of space can be found in Houston, Texas.
Inside Building 32 of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, is the closest you can get to outer space without leaving the ground. There, you will find the Space Environment Simulation laboratory, which houses a "clean room" and Chamber A, a thermal vacuum chamber.
The chamber recreates the environment of outer space and was originally designed to test the Apollo spacecraft in the 1960s. Now, it's now outfitted to test the James Webb telescope.
"The environment [in space] is so extreme, there are not going to be any return trips to make any kind of adjustments or repairs," said Mary Halligan, the facility manager. "So things have to work, and this is why the testing in here is so important, so critical to the program."
The chamber at first was designed to get down to 20 degrees Kelvin but now can reach even lower than that -- 11 degrees Kelvin, which equals about -440 degrees Fahrenheit.
To keep those cold temperatures inside the 90-foot high chamber, NASA uses a hydraulically operated door to the chamber, which has a 40-foot diameter and weighs 40 tons.
Check out NASA's space-simulation chamber in the video below from Gizmodo: