A crane lifts the cryogenic chamber from the space simulation facility at the Air Force Research Laboratory's Information Directorate at the Griffiss Business & Technology Park, formerly known as the Rome Air Development Center. The chamber is on its way to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., where it will be used to test items in pressures and temperatures simulating space environments. Photo: USAF

A multi-million-dollar cryogenic chamber, erected as part of Air Force research for President Reagan's 1980s Strategic Defense Initiative, will soon be helping NASA develop space science capabilities for the 21st century.

Opened in June 1989 at the then Rome Air Development Center, the "Cryogenic Test Facility" was built to test prototype space systems and components in pressures and temperatures simulating space environments. The chamber and associated equipment cost approximately $4 million. It was funded through the Strategic Defense Initiative Office at a time when testing was projected for large optical components of a space-based surveillance system.

The CTF will now become the largest vertical cryogenic chamber at NASA's Marshall complex in Alabama when it's completely moved. The move will cost approximately $300,000; however experts estimate the cost of building a new facility would be between $6 and $10 million.

After a crane lifted the main, two-story tank from an annex of the Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate, it as well as mounts and controls were loaded on a truck destined for the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

Rome experts said pressure in the chamber can be lowered to near vacuum conditions and the facility was designed to drop temperatures to 100 degrees Kelvin, or 279 degrees below zero on the Fahrenheit scale. It can accommodate test articles up to six feet in size.

Workers prepare to hoist the cryogenic chamber onto a nearby truck. Photo: USAF

"The cryo chamber was used for more than just testing objects in extreme cold," said James W. Cusack, an engineer on the program at the time and now chief of the information directorate's information systems division. "It also served as an optical test chamber."

Rome's original mission was to test optics envisioned for a space-based ballistic missile defense system, he said.

"With this chamber, engineers would look down at the mirror being tested from above and conduct experiments with classic optical test equipment," he said. Based on chamber observations, the mirrors' surface could be altered to eliminate minute atomic-level variations the simulated space environment caused."

With the demise of SDI space optics work at Rome, the chamber was renamed the Space Simulation Facility and was used sporadically under a 1994 memorandum of understanding with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md."