Deep in the belly of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, lie "The Domes." Step into one of them and suddenly you're standing on the surface of Mars, or you're flying high above the Earth, looking out from the International Space Station. This is the Systems Engineering Simulator, where we learned to fly, drive, and design better space vehicles.

Gizmodo's Space Camp is all about the under-explored side of NASA, from robotics to medicine to deep-space telescopes to art. All this week we'll be coming at you direct from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, shedding a light on this amazing world. You can follow the whole series here.

The two spherical simulators, dubbed Alpha Dome and Beta Dome, are both set up to be extremely versatile. They perform simulations for crew training, engineering analysis for the two missions currently flying now that support the ISS, and for the prototype vehicles that may fly in the future.

Each dome is inside a large room with high ceilings. From the outside they look like huge spherical silos, gray and nondescript, with nothing that would tip you off to the host of technology within. Inside, it feels kind of like an IMAX theater, but warped. The screen has a very pronounced curve, designed to fill your peripheral vision when you're placed in the middle. Turn around and you'll see close to a dozen projectors mounted on various poles and catwalks, together weaving a tapestry of a single, gigantic image.

First there's the Alpha Dome. It's a 24-foot diameter dome and it has eight projectors that provide the visual models. Down the hall there's Beta Dome, also 24 feet in diameter but newer and a bit more advancedit has a wider field of view because it uses 11 projectors instead of 8, creating an extremely immersive view of the landscape before you.

Looking down on the cupola mockup inside Alpha Dome, with parts of simulated Earth and the ISS in the background

Alpha Dome is currently set up with a model of the cupola observatory module on the ISS. Out the windows you see what the astronauts would see: section of the space station flying high above a stunning view of Earth. Inside are all the same controllers and displays you'll find on the station. The cupola is where astronauts operate the ship's large robotic arm, so this setup gives them an idea place to practice those skills without, you know, breaking anything expensive. Like the ISS. Or an astronaut.

See, when a ship makes its way to the ISS, once it gets close enough, someone onboard the station uses the remote manipulator system (a.k.a. the Canada Arm 2) to reach out, grab the ship, and then line it up perfectly with the hatch. The arm is just a much more precise means of control that the small thrusters on the capsule itself, so once it's grabbed on it's far easier to guide it in. And that's how spaceships merge, boys and girls, now let's never speak of this again.

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Inside "The Domes," Where NASA Drives the Spacecraft of the Future