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NASA
Crew members for the current NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations simulation, or NEEMO, float around a porthole 63 feet below the Atlantic Ocean's surface at the Aquarius Reef Base undersea research habitat. The crew is led by NASA astronaut Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger and also includes Japan's Kimiya Yui, the European Space Agency's Timothy Peake and Cornell astronomer Steven Squyres. Aquarius team member James Talacek peers out from the porthole.
If NASA’s underwater practice session is any indication of what a real space mission to an asteroid will be like, you can expect to follow along with the exploration of a near-Earth asteroid via Facebook, Twitter and the Web — or whatever takes their place by the year 2025. There’s a string of chats and webcasts that let you in on the action at the Aquarius deep-sea habitat during the simulated mission, known as NEEMO 16.
As the "16" suggests, the space agency has been doing NEEMO — NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations — for more than a decade. The idea is to simulate the logistics associated with an extended space mission, as well as the isolation, by sending an astronaut crew into the Aquarius, 63 feet (19 meters) below the Atlantic Ocean's surface in the Florida Keys, and have them practice the routines they'd be doing in scuba gear.
This summer's 12-day simulation began on Monday with the four-person crew's "splashdown" into the sea. The NEEMO 16 crew is headed by NASA astronaut Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger, who flew into space on the shuttle Discovery in 2010, and also includes Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui, British astronaut Timothy Peake and Cornell astronomer Steve Squyres (who's the top scientist on the Mars rover team, the chairman of the NASA Advisory Council, and a veteran of NEEMO 15). Aquarius habitat technicians Justin Brown and James Talacek play support roles underwater.
Last year marked the first time that the NEEMO exercise was designed in line with the space agency's current plan to send a crew to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025. This year, the four-person crew will bring even more of a sense of realism to the simulation: For instance, they're communicating with an onshore Mission Control team on a delayed basis, to reflect the light travel times that would be involved with a deep-space mission.
They're also experimenting with different ways to explore an asteroid-style surface. Because a small asteroid has nearly negligible gravity, astronauts won't be able to tramp across it as if it were Earth or even the moon. One option would be to use attachment points and handholds to move across the asteroid surface. Another option would be to use mini-spacecraft to hover over and touch down on the surface. Both techniques are being tested during NEEMO 16.
During the latter part of the simulation, Nuytco's DeepWorker one-person submersibles will be deployed for underwater excursions by the NEEMO aquanauts. "They get flown around the reef with their personal transporters," Saul Rosser, operations director for the Aquarius Reef Base, told me today.
The crew members also plan to conduct a variety of experiments that play off the fact that the atmospheric pressure inside the Aquarius habitat is equal to the surrounding water pressure at depth — which is about 2.5 times the air pressure at the surface. The experiments will show whether simple tasks such as blowing a bubble or operating a remote-controlled device are tougher at high pressure than they are at normal pressure.
To add a social-media angle, folks who are following the NEEMO mission will be invited to predict the outcome of each experiment. Starting on Thursday, watch for announcements on the following forums: NASA's NEEMO Facebook page and Twitter account, the JSC Education Facebook page and "Teaching From Space" Twitter account, and the European Space Agency's Facebook page and Twitter account. This NASA Web page provides details on how to compete, and what you can win.
You can also monitor the NEEMO 16 mission via the this Ustream live-video page or this Aquarius webcam page, and watch for updates on Flickr and YouTube. Web-streamed educational activities are planned every day for the next week and beyond, in cooperation with the Challenger Center for Space Science Education. The interactive webcasts will be supplemented by chat capability.
The Aquarius Reef Base is the world's only undersea research station, situated three and a half miles (5.6 kilometers) off Key Largo on a sandy patch of seafloor sitting next to spectacular coral reefs. It's owned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and operated by the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. NEEMO ranks among the highlights of Aquarius' research season, but Rosser said there's more to come.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Aquarius' founding, and to mark the occasion, Rosser and his colleagues are planning an underwater extravaganza next month. He was reluctant to provide the details, but a sneak peek that was posted online says the golden-anniversary mission will be led by two pioneers of marine science, Sylvia Earle and Mark Patterson.
"Stay tuned," Rosser said.
More about NEEMO and Aquarius:
- Astronauts go deep for undersea 'asteroid' trip
- NASA halts undersea mission due to hurricane
- Aquanauts live in a scientific fishbowl
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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Pitons and lines (ropes) would be safest (using the appropriate materials of course), but having thrusters and reaction mass would be good as backup or emergency options (though a small aerosol type can would work in a pinch). You could rig a harness with multiple loops to attach rings to lines or anchors to. You could add small thruster nozzles at strategic points on the space suit, carry limited reaction mass to use in emergencies as a backup to the safety lines. A spike launcher with a line attached to the spike could be used to place the pitons far ahead or from the spacecraft to the rock in question. The Thrusters and spacesuit will require some research and development, the spike/piton and safety lines just require practice as the tech is already there. (although a "thruster pistol" would do and would be fairly easy to produce, basically a gun designed to shoot compressed air at a reasonable volume to provide thrust on demand, rechargeable even)
Makes you wonder if movies like Armagedon and Deep Impact knew something the rest of us didnt.
You could never get me to do that ....
Those guys or gals that would land on an asteroid , have more ( you know what ) , than I do ....
I'll be happy checking out their venture from my living room ....
Thanks for the article Alan ....
I have a feeling that the thing will end up training for a lunar mission before 2025. In the long run I figure it will be a good thing. 2025 is still a few more presidents away, and things are in motion now that one never would of expected not very long ago, world power has changed, space budgets have changed, whole purposes have changed and curious questions have changed, and will continue to change....one thing that did not change, physics. Still the same. It's fuzzy from this end, but economics will keep hammering away at the plan. Today the plan is vesta?.....our biggest challange is to keep them from turnng the plan into an excuse to spend a lot of money and do nothing. Soon, something on the moon is going to be very interesting, and then asap, everyone will want at least a telepresence on the moon. Vesta will get pushed back, mars nudged forward, and the moon, moving even closer into our grasp, will again ignite man's passion on a large scale to explore space, from a moonbase Like I said, it's a bit fuzzy, I don't see a resident of hong kong holding up a large chunk of lunar rock saying it's a fortune in helium three, but I don't think it's a resident of El paso, either. I won't guess, but I can suppose the chinese won't be far off picture, (maybe they make the web cam on the google prize winning robot that snaps the pic that starts the gold rush, I dunno). Good to plan. Better to Think. Best to do. Where are you? Vesta? Really now? Once moon bases are established, runs to vesta and the likes will be routine secondary outings. The moon will be a waystation for large electric ships that garner most of their propulsion from the Suns powerful electric wave, sweeping out across the solar system like a hugh electric spiral, taking us to and from mars in days, and on out in weeks. So we sit here and argue about lego blocks like it's important or something. Those ships will need to built further out than the moon. But closer, way closer, than the asteroid belt. A small cube sat could and sould be sent to vesta next year, and one a month to each asteroid, and the big ones twice, every month after that. Maybe we'd lose interest in vesta by 2025 if we had a half dozen imperial probe droids give it a good check up well before hand.....at least one crew should keep training for a lunar mission.....call it an intuitive thing, or training to keep it real, or something to do on casual fridays, or, perhaps, just plain ole common sense. Always prepared, and all that plus a bag of chips. P.S. so long and thanks for all the fish.....
I'm about burned out on the "have a woman lead" concept of this period in time in America.
man that gret
Manned missions to local asteroids don't really make any scientific sense. IF the goal is to retrieve asteroid material, a robot effort would suffice, be far less costly, not have any need for elaborate life suport equipment and tonnage, not require highly specialized human training programs, and not risk anyone's life. As has been mentioned so very often in this blog and elsewhere, a LUNAR manned expedition, not another engineering stunt, makes far more sense. An expedition to The Moon in, say 2025, could make real advances in the establishment of a true colony. The current approach by NASA seems divergent and scattered. Is it the asteroid mission or the stretch to Mars? Considering the current economic shortcomings, I can't understand the necessity of juggling both. Either one is costly and challenging, but which one has the greater 'return on investment? A manned asteroid effort seems relatively fruitless. It is clear that a 'lunar bypass' policy is firmly in place for now at NASA and in the White House, but policies change like the weather. NASA apparently wants desperately to 'do something' soon to keep up its front runner image. But is a manned asteroid rendezvous anything more than a stunt? Clearly, a robot device could retrieve core samples and do so at far less of an investment of limited available $$$.