From Wild Blue Yonder To The Deep Blue Sea

For the first time, an astronaut with months of experience in space will have a chance to compare that experience to life underwater. Peggy Whitson, a veteran of the International Space Station, will command a NASA crew spending two weeks on the bottom of the ocean.

Whitson, who called the Space Station home for six months last year, will be joined by astronauts Clay Anderson and Garret Reisman and by scientist Emma Hwang for a NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) mission June 16-29. The quartet will serve as the NASA members of a crew that will live in the Aquarius Underwater Research Facility off the coast of Key Largo (FL).

Not All That Different

The Aquarius facility is similar in size to the International Space Station's living quarters, the Zvezda Service Module. The crew will use the undersea habitat as practice for long-duration space habitation, while conducting scientific research on the human body and coral reef environment. They will also build undersea structures to simulate Space Station assembly activities.

"NEEMO 5, our next-generation mission, goes beyond the bounds of space analog experience and will attempt to answer several significant scientific questions about long duration isolation in extreme environments," said Bill Todd, NEEMO project manager at JSC. "We have ratcheted up the isolation factor, complexity and science objectives to a level that closely parallels a space mission experience. And the science we are performing may very well help answer several critical path questions on our road map for journeying to Mars and beyond."

The NEEMO missions are a cooperative project of NASA, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Undersea Research Center and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

They use Aquarius, the only undersea research laboratory in the world, which is owned by NOAA and managed by UNC-Wilmington. The 45-foot long by 13-foot diameter underwater home and laboratory operates three miles off Key Largo in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. It lies about 62 feet beneath the surface.

The facility is situated next to deep coral reefs and provides life support systems that allow scientists to live and work in reasonably comfortable quarters. Aquarius is supported by a life support buoy on the surface, which provides power, life support and communications capabilities. A shore-based "mission control" for the Aquarius laboratory in Florida and a control room at the Johnson Space Center will monitor the crew's activities.

Now That's A Long-Distance Call!

The aquanauts plan to discuss their mission with the current crew of the International Space Station, Commander Yuri Malenchenko and NASA International Space Station Science Officer Ed Lu, during a ship-to-ship linkup tentatively planned for about 12:25 p.m. EDT on June 25.

FMI: NASA NEEMO Page, www.uncwil.edu/nurc/aquarius/