By Mark Cotta Vaz
Later this year NASA will launch the first components of the football-field-sized International Space Station, the most complex project in the agency's history. The rocket crews train in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, a 6.5-million-gallon pool at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Practicing underwater to simulate zero gravity, astronauts build full-scale replicas of the modules they will assemble in space. "Earth orbit will be a hands-on construction site," says agency spokesperson James Hartsfield, describing the 45 shuttle missions and 1 million pounds of tools and parts that will go into space over the next five years.
ELECTRIC WORD
Deep-Space Diving