CSA Commander Hadfield: Checking his Headlight

Commander Hadfield of the CSA undergoing astronaut training for ISS and spacewalks (EVA), checks his equipment.

Budget Cuts Hit NOAA Aquarius Underwater Laboratory - YouTube

The future of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Aquarius Reef Base laboratory, the world's only undersea lab appears bleak owing to budget cuts from the Federal Government.

The NOAA was under orders to tighten up and the $3 million annual budget for Aquarius was eliminated, ABC News reported.

Though an Aquarius Foundation is trying to raise funds to maintain the lab, its efforts may not raise adequate funds to fund active work from the lab. Meanwhile, the lab's supporters are hoping a large donor will come forward amidst criticism that it is expensive to maintain.

Even when not in use, divers must ensure that its systems work properly every week in salt water.

Aquarius is the only undersea laboratory dedicated to marine science operating in the world.

Owned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and managed by the University of North Carolina at Wilmington (UNCW), Aquarius operates 4.5 kilometers offshore of Key Largo, Florida 20 meters beneath the surface.

Aquarius was originally conceived and funded by NOAA's National Undersea Research Program (NURP) in the mid 1980s.

The underwater laboratory was built by Victoria Machine Works in 1986-87. Initial deployment in the U.S. Virgin Islands before Hurricane Hugo struck in 1989, and devastated St. Croix.

Aquarius was retrieved from the seafloor in 1990 and was moved to North Carolina where it was refurbished and then redeployed in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary in 1993.

NASA NBL: JAXA Astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and Suni Williams

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, attired in a training version of his spacesuit, is submerged in the waters of the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) near NASA's Johnson Space Center in this image from January 2012. 

Divers assisted Hoshide in this training exercise, which is intended to help prepare him for work on the exterior of the International Space Station.

Hoshide and his Expedition 32 crew mates Suni Williams and Yuri Malenchenko are scheduled to launch aboard the Soyuz TMA-05M from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, on July 14 to the station.

Image Credit: NASA

NASA NEEMO 16 Crew Interview with European Space Agency Astronaut Timothy Peake - YouTube

NASA NEEMO: Space Exploration Vehicle arrives

Space Exploration Vehicle arrives at ‪NEEMO

NASA 16th NEEMO Expedition

The 16th NEEMO expedition will commence June 11, 2012. NEEMO, or NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations, is an aquatic program that uses the under water base Aquarius to test technologies for use in space.

“Water is a nice way to free your body and get to explore a different way of movement. Since we’re so stuck with walking here on Earth, it’s nice to float around, flip around — just like in space,” says mission commander Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburgher.

Water provides a reasonable analogy for the space environment since buoyancy mimics reduced gravity in some respects.

NEEMO crewmembers are known as aquanauts, although some have or will achieve astronaut status as well. The 16th expedition is led by Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburgher, a Space Shuttle veteran.

Timothy Peake, an up and coming ESA astronaut and Kimiya Yui a rising JAXA astronaut, will also join the crew, along with veteran aquanaut and Mars Rover principal investigator Steve Squyres.

The two week mission will work on how to take a sample from an asteroid. “If you just do something as simple as hit a rock with a hammer, you’re going to go flying off into space, so we’ve got to develop a whole new set of tricks and tools for operating on the surface of an asteroid,” says Squyres.

Past missions tested jetpacks, which did not work well for staying in one spot. The current crew will test miniature submarines. “Imagine this little submarine with a six-foot-long beam sticking off the front of it and an astronaut on the front of that like a hood ornament,” Squyres says.

Asteroids could be a NASA target for a manned mission beyond 2025, but they may have to play catch-up as more players become interested in asteroids as celestial targets.

JAXA already had a successful asteroid sample return mission with Hayabusa in 2010 and is working on a second one.

NEEMO 16 – ESA In search of an asteroid

Earlier this year, ESA Astronaut Samantha was fortunate enough to be assigned to NASA’s Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) 16th mission to an underwater habitat called ‘Aquarius’, which lies about 20m under the ocean and nearly 8 miles off Florida’s Key Largo coast.

Over the years, NEEMO missions have been used by NASA to provide vital research and development data to support future exploration missions.

Living underwater is an excellent space analogue, the crew can practice EVA (‘spacewalk’) techniques using neutral buoyancy in water, whilst Aquarius offers an environment similar to a spacecraft: confined living space, total reliance on life support systems and no option for a quick return.

The crew can only surface safely after 12 hours of decompression – to do otherwise would risk severe decompression illness or ‘the bends’.

The NEEMO 16 crew comprises NASA astronaut and mission commander Dorothy (Dottie) Metcalf-Lindenburger, JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui, Professor of Astronomy Steve Squyres and Astronaut Samantha herself.

In addition, they will be supported by two habitat technicians who are also diving experts. The crew will spend 12 days living in Aquarius, conducting two EVAs each day.

Like any space mission, there will be an experienced ground support team who will manage operations, communications and logistics from their Mission Control Centre (MCC) on dry land.

To read the full ESA blog entry click on this link.

ESA Astronaut Samantha stars in "A day in the life of a Cyborg"

On March 5th ESA Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti had her first suited EVA training event in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab in Houston. Here are some of her impressions from that special day.

 
Days like today do not happen often.

Days when you experience something radically new.

Days where unusual stresses force you to rethink your interaction with the environment.

When your brain learns to give a new meaning to sensory information, when your muscles acquire new patterns of movement to overcome obstacles hitherto unknown.

Days when you learn to be a cyborg.

These days, even your eyes can betray you for a moment. While the crane I was in the water of NASA's NBL, it takes a few seconds for me to adjust and make the focus.

The effect of the shield is such that objects appear to be farther than they actually are. Consequently, the enormous size of the giant pool of 12 meters appears even greater.

At the bottom is a metal creature dormant: a faithful replica of the International Space Station, set in its outer contours. The shells of pressurized modules, the truss segments, antennae, cables.

This and many other details are reproduced in this underwater world to provide astronauts a realistic environment in which they train for extravehicular activity (EVA).

I was widely informed about all aspects of work today and I explored the station under water several times during dives underwater. Yet this seems different, almost surreal to watch it from inside the suit.

Before the end of my training I will become the EVA very familiar with the station, with paths of travel, the workplace, hazards but three hours today to get used primarily with the EMU, the pressure suit which allows astronauts to make spacewalks.

In orbit, the combination is a life support system provides closed-circuit oxygen, ventilating, cooling and removal of CO2.

In the basin, the backpack life support is inactive and survival under water is guaranteed by an umbilical cord that connects us to the surface and provides us with nitrox breathing.

To prevent overheating, water flows through tubes 80 meters woven into our clothing full liquid cooling and ventilation (LCVG: Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment).

When we talk about the speech circuit, the entire building we mean: the other astronauts in combination in the water, divers support, the test director and course instructor in the control room.

The latter is typically the one who speaks with us, because following our every move broadcast on four cameras: two cameras mounted on our helmets, the two cameras for divers who are assigned to each of us.

"We", in fact, it's me and the veteran astronaut Tracy Caldwell, who is determined to make this both an enjoyable and effective for the first time for me. I would not have asked for a better coach.

For the next three hours, my main task is to explore the limits of the combination, to identify areas of my movements in it, to get used to its size and limited field of view, to practice moving and reorienting of my body, to identify areas of possible improvement to the fit of the suit.

There is no rotation of the arms outside the limited space allowed by the shoulder joints. There is no rotation of the neck to look up or down on the side: the whole body must rotate.

There are no quick movements: an application to change its orientation deliberate effort and patience. "Do not fight the combination!" Is the common currency. If you do, you will only exhaust you.

Read More at ESA Portal

NEEMO 16 mission scheduled for June: Asteroid underwater training

The next NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) mission is being scheduled for June, with teams already preparing for a recon trip ahead of the exercise.

The underwater training exercises are staged at the Aquarius underwater habitat in Key Largo, Florida – simulating the conditions and protocols for a real Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) mission.

NEEMO 15 was the first real full scale operation – even including Mission Operations Directorate (MOD) teams – continuing the trend of testing equipment and operations required for exploration of Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs).

The mission treated the underwater environment like a giant Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL), allowing for specialist divers to simulate working on a NEA, communicating – with time delays – with mission control and practising the use of tools to work on an asteroid.

The October NEEMO 15 mission was led by NASA astronaut and former International Space Station (ISS) crew member Shannon Walker.

The crew included Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi and Canadian Space Agency astronaut David Saint-Jacques from the 2009 NASA astronaut class.

Steven Squyres of Cornell University and scientific principal investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover Project, joined James Talacek and Nate Bender of the University of North Carolina, Wilmington – who are both professional aquanauts.

NASA astronauts Stan Love, Richard Arnold and Mike Gernhardt, all veteran spacewalkers, participated in the NEEMO mission from the DeepWorker submersible, which they piloted.

The submersible is a key element of simulating a NEA mission, acting as an underwater stand-in for the Multi Mission Space Exploration Vehicle (MMSEV), which is currently the leading concept to be the main NEA exploration vehicle at the site at the asteroid, utilizing its robotic arms and crew airlock.

Aquarius acts as the Deep Space Hab (DSH) for these missions, a large element of hardware that would arrive at the NEA after being launched from Earth on the Space Launch System (SLS) – likely the 105mt Block 1A Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle (HLV).

NEEMO 15 worked on three major elements of a NEA mission, such as how to anchor to the surface via the “excursion lines”; how to move around; and how best to collect data and materials.

Read More about NEEMO here

NASA NEEMO: Undersea Asteroid Mission Halted Due to Hurricane Rina

The 15th NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) ended ahead of schedule due to the predicted path of Hurricane Rina.

In a preparation for future space exploration, the six aquanaut crew lived in the Aquarius underwater research laboratory at Key Largo, Florida for five days.

Usually the mission is for 10 days, but due to the Hurricane Rina which heads towards Key Largo, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which operates the lab, determined Rina posed a risk to the safety of the mission taking place near the area.

"Despite the length, we accomplished a significant amount of research," said NEEMO project manager Bill Todd. "We're already learning lessons from working in this environment."

The six-member NEEMO crew -- Commander and NASA astronaut Shannon Walker, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi, Canadian Space Agency astronaut David Saint-Jacques, Steven Squyres of Cornell University and James Talacek and Nate Bender of the University of North Carolina Wilmington, kicked off this year's mission Oct. 20, after an initial delay caused by another storm in the area.

The aquanauts conducted six underwater spacewalks and one day of scientific research inside the Aquarius habitat.

The crew completed four days of scientific asteroid exploration analog operations using the deep worker submersibles that stood in for the Space Exploration Vehicle.

This year's mission was the first NEEMO to focus on operational concepts that would be used in human exploration of an asteroid.

NASA said the remainder of NEEMO 15 will not be rescheduled, and all media events are canceled. The NEEMO 16 mission is tentatively set for the summer of 2012.

The NEEMO crew focused on three different aspects of a mission to an asteroid surface. The first is anchoring to the surface of the asteroid.

Unlike the Moon or Mars, an asteroid would have little, if any, gravity to hold astronauts or vehicles to its surface, so an anchor would be necessary.

Mike Gernhardt (NASA) pilots the DeepWorker to a location that will allow Zeb Scoville (NASA) to capture an interesting specimen.

Source: NASA

 

It will require a method of connecting multiple anchors to form pathways to move around on the surface of an asteroid.

The best way to connect these anchors was the second aspect of a near-Earth asteroid mission addressed by NEEMO 15.

Finally, since NASA's purpose in visiting an asteroid would be for scientific research, the third aspect of this mission investigated by NEEMO 15 was different methods of sample collection.

Take a glimpse of more NEEMO 15 asteroid research under the sea.

ISS Cosmonaut Training

Russian specialists practice repair and maintenance work on the International Space Station while wearing space suits underwater in the Cosmonaut Training Centre pool in Star City outside Moscow

Picture: EPA

NASA: Underwater Astronaut Training Tank