October 13, 2026 — Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has added a 12-foot-diameter, 10-foot-long thermal vacuum (TVAC) chamber to simulate the vacuum and extreme temperatures of space to ensure spacecraft can survive that harsh environment. The chamber, which weighs roughly 40,000 pounds, is the newest edition to SwRI’s 74,000-square-foot Space Systems Integration Facility.
“The chamber simulates the extreme cold and heat of space,” said Institute Engineer Kelly Smith. “It can simultaneously represent the freezing vacuum of space and the Sun’s intense heat that spacecraft will experience.”
The TVAC chamber can create temperatures from -180 degrees to over 150 degrees Celsius. Its large cryogenic pumps can depressurize the chamber in roughly an hour — most chambers take hours to reach a comparable vacuum level.
The chamber is part of an 11,000-square-foot environmental testing facility, which includes a semi-anechoic shielded enclosure for electromagnetic compatibility and interference (EMC/EMI) testing and a high-decibel acoustic test chamber. The same building houses 20,000 square feet of integration facilities, including two ISO 7 class 10,000 cleanrooms with 5-ton overhead bridge cranes, two ISO 8 class 100,000 high-bay cleanrooms outfitted with 7.5-ton bridge cranes, as well as two ISO 5 and two ISO 6 clean rooms for ultra-sensitive optical system development and integration.
SwRI is currently building multiple spacecraft that will undergo testing in the chamber. These include QuickSounder, the first in a new generation of NOAA low-Earth orbit environmental satellites, and Provisioner, the Astroscale U.S. refueler, which is funded by the U.S. Space Force.
“Having this chamber on-site, in the same building, means it’s no longer necessary to package and load a spacecraft onto a truck and transport it somewhere else for testing,” Smith said. “This takes us one step closer to a turnkey spacecraft integration and test center inside one building.”
Installation was completed in September and final commissioning is in progress.
For more information, visit Space Engineering or contact Joanna Quintanilla, +1 210 522 2073, Communications Department, Southwest Research Institute, 6220 Culebra Road, San Antonio, TX 78238-5166.