NASA announces two upcoming undersea missions

(Aquanauts during NASA’s NEEMO 16 mission – Photo Credit: ESA/Herve Stevenin)

NASA has confirmed that they will conduct two missions on the ocean floor over the course of the summer. Aquanauts will participate in the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) where underwater activities will produce valuable information for future International Space Station and space exploration missions.

The water-based study can provide valuable information that will directly correlate to life aboard the space station, where crew members perform critical tasks that present similar constraining factors to those experienced in an undersea environment.

Bill Todd, NEEMO project manager at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, stated: “It is both challenging and exciting for our astronaut crews to participate in these undersea missions in preparation for spaceflight”. He added: “It is critical that we perform science applicable to NASA’s exploration goals in a high-fidelity space operational context. The extreme environment of life undersea is as close to being in space as possible.”

(NEEMO 16 Aquanauts Pose with DeepWorker Vehicle – Photo Credit: NASA)

The first mission, NEEMO 18, will begin on July 21 and will last nine days. It will focus on studies in behavioural health and performance, as well as human health issues, and habitability.

Astronaut Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will command NEEMO 18, and he will be joined by NASA astronauts Jeanette Epps and Mark Vande Hei alongside European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet.

(Aquanauts – Photo Credit: ESA)

NEEMO 19 will start on September 7 and shall run for just seven days. This mission will focus on the evaluation of tele-mentoring operations for the ESA.

Telementoring is when a crew member is given instruction for a task by a remotely located expert who is virtually present via a video and voice connection. NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik will lead this second mission, accompanied by Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen, and Herve Stevenin, ESA’s Head of Extravehicular Activity (EVA) Training at the European Astronaut Center in Cologne, Germany.

(NEEMO 16 Commander takes the plunge to kick off Mission Day 1 – Photo Credit: NASA)

Both NEEMO missions will evaluate EVA objectives and engineering investigations to advance current technologies and training techniques used on the space station and in future asteroid exploration. These EVAs will also focus on evaluating man-machine work systems and EVA tools and techniques for exploration tasks in varying levels of gravity ranging from that of asteroids to the gravity of Martian moons and Mars itself.

The missions also will assess the use of tools which help astronauts learn new procedures while in flight. One such tool for the “just in time training” that is delivered to the crew in orbit is “intuitive procedures”. These procedures use a combination of text, pictures, and videos to instruct the crew on how to perform a task that they were never trained for on Earth, and are presented in a way that the crew quickly understands.

The NEEMO crews will work 62 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, 5.4 nautical miles off the coast of Key Largo, Florida, in Florida International University’s undersea research habitat ‘Aquarius Reef Base’.

(Close-up View of the Aquarius Habitat – Photo Credit: NASA)

For more information about NEEMO, the crews and links to follow the missions on Facebook and Twitter, click here.