Oil and Gas company Petrofac will train its employees in space age facilities belonging to NASA as part of a co-operative deal. The space exploration centre will share an underwater Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) near Houston, Texas.

The oil workers will use the NBL for survival training along with NASA who will continue training International Space Station crews there for space walks. As the Space Shuttle Program comes to a close NASA has less need for the facility.

The 202-foot-long, 102-foot-wide pool, which holds 6.2 million gallons of water and is big enough to hold a full-scale space shuttle model will be modified for specialised survival training.

NASA says sharing the facility will help them and other parties develop new technologies to be used both on Earth and in space.