NASA Johnson Space Center’s Thermal Vacuum Chamber A is a large-scale facility famous for testing Apollo spacecraft, with and without mission crew. Its physical volume and high-fidelity space simulation capabilities are adjustable for thermal-vacuum studies of a wide variety of craft and components, including entire space vehicles. A mobile crane usually inserts test articles into the chamber.

Additional test support equipment includes mass spectrometers, and infrared and television cameras. The numerous flanges at all levels provide ample pass-throughs for electrical, instrumentation, and gasses to support large-systems assessments.

Chamber A hosted NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) for final cryogenic testing to ensure the observatory performs effectively in the frigid, airless environment of space. Tests included an important alignment check of JWST’s 18 primary mirror segments, to make sure all Webb’s gold-plated, hexagonal segments move in concert like a single, monolithic mirror.

This was the first time the telescope’s optics and its instruments were tested together, though the instruments had previously undergone cryogenic testing in a smaller chamber at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Read more about Thermal Vacuum Chamber A.

To arrange testing in this facility, please contact Jon Homan or email hq-setmo@mail.nasa.gov.