>> Hi, I'm Janet Kavandi,
Director of the NASA Glenn Research Center
and former NASA astronaut.
Looking down on this beautiful planet from space,
the Great Lakes were easy to spot.
You can easily see the lights of Chicago, Detroit
and Cleveland at night.
However, not so easily visible
from space is a treasure hidden near the Lake Erie shore.
NASA's Plum Brook Station.
Let's take a look at what make it's so special.
Plum Brook Station contains 10 square miles or 6,400 acres.
It is a secure site
with securable facilities and data systems.
It's 7 miles by road from the Port of Huron, Ohio.
41 miles from Mansfield Lahm Airport.
And 50 miles
from Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport.
Our talented Plum Brook team creates conditions
that mimic the cold, vacuum, vibration and noise found
in the upper atmosphere during the ascent
to space and in space itself.
Plum Brook's 100 megawatt power grid enables testing
on a day shift, while making sure
that our friends outside the fence aren't affected
when we operate.
I'll ask some of our experts to tell you about each
of our four world-unique facilities.
David Stringer is retired Air Force Brigadier General
who is the current Director of Plum Brook Station.
[ Music ]
>> Welcome to the hypersonic test facility currently hosting
the NASA electric aircraft test bed installed behind me.
This gives us a place to test techniques to improve
and extend the range of current and future aircraft designs.
It also retains the capability to do hypersonic testing.
That's five or more times the speed of sound.
So in this place we're able to combine altitude, speed,
chemistry and heat buildup to test weapons critical
to the nation's defense.
[ Music ]
>> This 25-foot, stainless steel sphere is both a pressure
chamber and a vacuum chamber.
Now, that means we can create conditions inside
that range anywhere from 2.5 times a normal Earth atmosphere.
All the way down to the near perfect vacuum of space.
What makes this chamber really special is
that we can operate it with sand inside.
That makes the combined effects chamber an ideal place
for the testing of ruggedized equipment to be used
on the surface of the moon.
Or Mars. Or any place else
where you have a very low atmospheric pressure.
Extreme hot and cold temperatures.
And lots of sand and soil.
[ Music ]
>> This is the in space propulsion facility.
NASA's premier location for testing large objects
under simulated space conditions.
Handling hydrogen rocket propellants.
And testing upper-stage rockets and rocket engines
under simulated altitude conditions.
The facility completed an expensive refurbishment
and started testing again in 2011.
Culminating in 2017 in another rocket engine test.
Among the tests scheduled to be completed here in the future,
are a manned spacecraft.
A lunar landing vehicle.
And a new upper-stage rocket.
[ Music ]
>> Welcome to the space environments complex.
It's here that NASA has assembled under one roof some
of the most unique test capabilities in the world.
The centerpiece is this vacuum chamber that you see behind me.
It's the largest in the world.
And it's roughly the same volume as the rotunda
in the U.S. Capitol in DC.
We use this chamber to subject spacecraft to the vacuum.
Extreme temperatures.
And expected radiofrequency interferences
that they'll see in space.
But we also want to make sure
that these same spacecraft can withstand the extreme
environments of launch.
So we've assembled a facility that's the most powerful
in the world to be able to subject these spacecraft
to the vibration and acoustic pressures
that they'll see during the ascent phase of the program.
[ Music ]
>> Space flight will always be a tricky business.
By testing flight hardware and facilities
like these before they launch, developers of space
and other systems can reduce risk.
And readily improve the success rates.
It's much more cost effective and safer to test first then
to experience a failure in flight.
Or worse, risk lives.
On the day that counts Plum Brook helps
to give the confidence that we need to be go for launch.
[ Music ]