NPP Runs the Gauntlet of Environmental Testing

NPP Runs the Gauntlet of Environmental Testing, a photo by NASA Goddard Photo and Video on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
NPP is lowered into the thermal vacuum chamber. Once inside the Iron Maiden (visible in the lower left) is fitted in place. Then air is pumped out of the chamber and temperature extremes are applied to replicate orbit conditions.

Credit: Ball Aerospace

The NPP satellite sits surrounded by 144 rock concert speakers. They're stacked in a circle 16 feet high in a testing room at Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colorado.

As engineers set up for the environmental test, Pink Floyd's song "Money" plays gently in the background. The music stops. The room clears. Then the sound engineer wearing earplugs and headphones in the control room next door flips a switch.

Slowly, the noise of thousands of pounds of exploding rocket fuel builds louder and louder until it blasts the satellite at a deafening 143.6 decibels -- loud enough to cause serious damage and pain to unprotected ears. "I was outside the building when they did the full level acoustics," says Glenn Iona, NPP Chief Engineer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "and I could feel the ground shaking