Umd Space Systems Laboratory

The Space Systems Laboratory (SSL) is part of the Aerospace Engineering Department and A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland. A leader in the area of astronautics, the SSL is centered around the Neutral Buoyancy Research Facility, a 50-foot diameter, 25-foot deep water tank that is used to simulate the microgravity environment of space. The only such facility in the world housed at a university, the SSL's neutral buoyancy tank is able to be used for undergraduate and graduate research alike. Research at the SSL emphasizes space robotics, human factors, applications of artificial intelligence and the underlying fundamentals of space simulation.