The Sonny Carter Training Facility, located at NASA’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston, where astronauts get critical training in preparation for human spaceflight missions, was granted a $265 million contract to V2X for the maintenance of safe operations. In order to guarantee the dependability of the integrated hardware and software systems used at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL), V2X will provide technical assistance. The duration of performance under the contract, including option periods, is 2033.
NASA’s next Artemis 2 mission, slated to launch in September 2025, will use the NBL as a training ground. As part of the Artemis 2 missions, humanity will return to the moon for the first time in almost fifty years with the historic journey of the first woman and person of colour to visit the moon. The team must make significant and careful preparations because they will be landing close to the moon’s south pole, which is known for its massive craters, intense heat, and patches of perpetual darkness.
Jeremy Wensinger, President and CEO of V2X, stated, “We are honoured to continue our partnership with NASA and support their mission to explore the frontiers of space.” There is no facility like the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, and we are dedicated to making sure that readiness for the next generation of space exploration, including the ground-breaking Artemis 2 mission.”
The astronauts at the NBL practice recovery missions, which are essential for the last phase of spaceflight in which the crew’s capsule returns to Earth and crashes into the ocean. The facility also has a dummy of the International Space Station, where astronauts train to operate in microgravity, which simulates the lower gravity found in space. The NBL has been improved recently by NASA and V2X, who turned a portion of it into a realistic recreation of the lunar surface.
